![](https://quimpergeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-Darrel-Cowan-wcoast-margin-photo.jpg)
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 4 PM
The Lecture: Baranof Island, Alaska, and Vancouver Island were neighbors 50 million years ago
Darrel Cowan will discuss the evolution of hypotheses about the large-scale coastwise displacements of tectonic elements or terranes along the western margin of North America. He will present the geologic evidence he published in 1982, which links Vancouver Island with southeast Alaska. The still-contentious Baja British Columbia hypothesis, developed in the early 1980s, was based entirely on paleomagnetic data.
This IN-PERSON ONLY lecture will start at 4 PM on Saturday, September 14, 2024, at the First Baptist Church, 1202 Lawrence St, Port Townsend, WA 98368 (entrance in the back). It is is free and open to the public. (Donations gratefully welcomed at the door.) The lecture will be recorded and posted shortly after the presentation, as are all our events since 2020.
About the Speaker:
Darrel Cowan is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences at the University of Washington. He refers to himself as a field structural geologist. Since 1974, Darrel has spent his career educating geologists in tectonics and structural geology. Darrel is a west coaster, originally from southern California. He graduated from Stanford in 1966 and finished his PhD in the Franciscan subduction complex there in early 1972. Darrel’s research projects and those of his graduate students have investigated structural and tectonic problems in the Pacific Northwest, including southwestern British Columbia and Vancouver Island, southern Alaska, Japan, and the northern Apennines and Sicily in Italy.