Abstract
The extent of dry land during post-Carboniferous time seems to have fluctuated about a constant mean—no secular decrease in marine inundation of the continents can be identified. Such a decrease was first proposed by Egyed1, who tried to show, with palaeogeographical measurements, that the seas have withdrawn steadily during the Phanerozoic; he deduced on this basis that the Earth is expanding. The idea of an expanding Earth has had little support2, but the steady marine recession seems to be more widely accepted. Hallam3, for example, confirmed Egyed's finding, and explained it as arising from orogenesis. My new estimate of the extent of the dry land, however, casts doubt on these earlier results, largely by taking into account continental drift and the progressive extension of shelf seas around the young Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
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Cogley, J. Late Phanerozoic extent of dry land. Nature 291, 56–58 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/291056a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/291056a0
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