Tectonics and Structural Geology

Extensional tectonics at oceanic transform faults: a new perspective on plate tectonics

Yu Ren November 24, 2021

Viscosity structure of the oceanic transform fault revealed by geodynamic simulations. Credit: Grevemeyer et al., 2021.

Yu Ren is a PhD candidate at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany. He uses three primary tools to study marine tectonics: geomorphology, seismology, and numerical modelling. His PhD project is on the structural and tectonic characterization of oceanic transform faults. Oceanic transform faults (OTFs), usually considered as first-order tectonic segmentation of mid-ocean r ...[Read More]

TS Must-read – Morgan (1968) Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, and Crustal Blocks

The Must-read team December 2, 2020

In his 1968 paper “Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, and Crustal Blocks”, Jason Morgan added the missing pieces of the plate tectonics: the representation of plates’ motion in terms of spherical surface, and plate rigidity. In the very first lines of the paper he describes his contribution as an “extension of the transform fault concept [of Wilson, 1965; see the TS-must-read blogpost of October 15, 2 ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Wilson (1965) A New Class of Faults and their Bearing on Continental Drift

The Must-read team September 15, 2020

In 1965, JT Wilson published “A New Class of Faults and their Bearing on Continental Drift” (https://doi.org/10.1038/207343a0). This is one of the papers that led to a paradigm shift in Earth Sciences and would become one of the bases of plate tectonics. The concept of the transform fault, introduced in this paper in a very smart way, is fundamental in tectonics textbooks nowadays. Indeed many of ...[Read More]