FIELD ECOLOGY JOURNAL the college school
Geology Geologic History of North Carolina In order to understand the scientific data that we collected and what it means, we must first look at North Carolina’s geological history and how geological changes began. Geological changes in North Carolina began around 1,700 million years ago thanks to the uplifting of tectonic plates. This process created mountain ranges and made North Carolina what it is today. Once these mountain ranges were created, erosion came into play and over time eroded numerous mountains and produced new shapes out of them. Thanks to different tectonic plates moving and colliding with each other, islands and vast landscapes were moved, including what would become North Carolina. Eventually, after millions of years of moving around, North Carolina found its current place on the eastern coast of North America, sometime before 200 CE. The reason that North Carolina and its provinces are so popular in the present day is because of these geological processes. (Walbert, 2018) Since all of these changes, many famous geologists, like James Hutton, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, and William Smith have studied geology and contributed to the Body of Knowledge. All of these contributions have made geology the science that it is today. An extremely well-known geologist, who is considered by many to be the father of modernday geology is named James Hutton. Around 1750, he started studying and observing how the land around him interacted with the wind and water due to erosion. He revolutionized many theories now widely accepted, such as uniformitarianism. This is a geological theory that states how the changes in the Earth’s crust have resulted from a uniform continuous process over time. This process turned out to be the moving of the tectonic plates. (Rosenberg, 2018) He also put to rest the universally accepted idea that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. Another notable geologist is Charles Lyell. He had groundbreaking theories regarding how old the Earth was and published several famous books explaining his ideas of how old the Earth was. His findings proved it to be around 4.5 billion years old. All of his ideas about how the Earth was formed and how old it truly is are now universally accepted and truly changed how we think about the Earth and why we think it is as old as it is. He also contributed and added to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. (Mitchell, 2019) This is how North Carolina underwent many changes over the course of millions of years and how famous geologists made groundbreaking discoveries to help further explain its history. If not for them, North Carolina’s background would still be a mystery. Around 1750, he started studying and observing how the land around him interacted with the wind and water due to erosion. 25
