Geology of Europe - Geosynclines

I have two reasons for addressing this thinking. One is that I puzzled over it when I was an undergraduate in geology. Back then, I assumed anything in print was infallible truth and tried to make sens of it. The second is that I believe that this thinking, faulty though it may be, was developed by intelligent men trying to make sense of what they knew about mountain ranges. It needs to reinterpreted and translated into modern concepts, and I believe it has.

I tripped over a paper in the December 1970 issue of "Tectonophysics" Volume 10, issues 5-6 pages 625-638 (14 pages) by John F. Dewey and John M. Bird (note that this itself is 50 years old) entitled: "Plate tectonics and geosynclines".

It was interesting, even amusing to read, and I extracted the following list from their paper, apparently all these terms were introduced earlier by Kay in 1951 in GSA Memoir 48 (148 pages) entitled "North American Geosynclines".

• Geosyncline
• Eugeosyncline
• Miogeosyncline
• Kinegeosyncline
• Epieugeosyncline
• Paraliogeosyncline
• Leptogeosyncline
• Exogeosyncline
• Idiogeosyncline
• Zeugeosyncline
• Orthogeosyncline

Models

Once you get past the clutter of big words and consider the processes being described in the Dewey and Bird paper, a person with a general knowledge of plate tectonics will find themselves on familiar ground. Why all the big words? On one hand the cynic will point out that big words have always been a tool for intimidation and power. On the other hand coining words that do get accepted as part of the jargon in any field makes a person feel important, even significant. Words ought to aid communication, and they can when they provide a compact representation of an important idea.

Once can be thankful that none of this terminology has "caught on". It is rare to even see the word "geosyncline" in current literature. One reads about accretionary wedges and foreland sediments.