Do magnetic anomalies prove seafloor spreading?
Magnetic anomalies or ‘stripes’ are seen as great evidence for plate tectonics. According to Baumgardner, they provide a relative time scale not based on radiometric dating. However, it is doubtful that this relative timescale, correlated with continental volcanism, is really independent of radiometric dating methods. William Glen states: ‘Potassium-argon dating of young rocks was the key to the development of the polarity-reversal time scale, just as the scale was the key to the confirmation of seafloor spreading.’9 The volcanic samples used to construct the polarity time scale for the first 4 million years of geological time were collected from various places on the Earth and dated by the K-Ar method.9 Of course, the fossils are made to agree with the time scale, so fossil sequences also are not independent of radiometric dating methods: ‘Therefore Savage provided advice and later, in 1964, coauthored an important paper with Evernden, Curtis, and Gideon T. James that demonstrated ess
Magnetic anomalies or ‘stripes’ are seen as great evidence for plate tectonics. According to Baumgardner, they provide a relative time scale not based on radiometric dating. However, it is doubtful that this relative timescale, correlated with continental volcanism, is really independent of radiometric dating methods. William Glen states: ‘Potassium-argon dating of young rocks was the key to the development of the polarity-reversal time scale, just as the scale was the key to the confirmation of seafloor spreading.’9 The volcanic samples used to construct the polarity time scale for the first 4 million years of geological time were collected from various places on the Earth and dated by the K-Ar method.9 Of course, the fossils are made to agree with the time scale, so fossil sequences also are not independent of radiometric dating methods: ‘Therefore Savage provided advice and later, in 1964, coauthored an important paper with Evernden, Curtis, and Gideon T. James that demonstrated ess
