History
The first scientific paper detailing the triple junction concept was published in 1969 by W. Jason Morgan, Dan McKenzie, and Tanya Atwater. The term has traditionally been used for the intersection of three divergent boundaries or spreading ridges. These three divergent boundaries ideally meet at near 120° angles.
In plate tectonics theory during the breakup of a continent, one of the divergent plate boundaries would fail (see aulacogen) and the other two would continue spreading to form an ocean. The opening of the south Atlantic Ocean started at the south of the South American and African continents, reaching a triple junction in the present Gulf of Guinea, from where it continued to the west. The NE-trending Benue Trough is the failed arm of this junction.
Read more about this topic: Triple Junction
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)