How Misconceptions on Heat Flow May have Delayed Discovery of Plate Tectonics

Abstract

Since 1906 it has been known that sialic rocks are richer in heat-generating radioactive elements than simatic rocks. This led to the assumption that convection in the mantle must rise under the sialic continents and descend under the simatic ocean floors. So persistent was this view that convective flow in the opposite direction was evaluated seriously only after Hess and Dietz proposed it in the 1960's.