Deep-Sea Drilling for Landlubber Geologists — The Southwest Pacific, an Accordion Plate Tectonics Analog for the Cordilleran Geosyncline

Abstract

The Deep Sea Drilling Project offers the geologist who is not trained in marine geology an unparalleled opportunity to study deep-sea sediments and volcanic rocks in their environment of formation and an opportunity to evaluate concepts of plate tectonics theory. Results of deep-sea drilling in the southwest Pacific are useful in interpreting the early history of the Cordilleran geosyncline as a product of continental fragmentation and the growth of volcanic arc-marginal ocean basin systems.