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October 7, 2004 • Volume 13 Number 3

Colloquium Looks at New England's Place on the 'Global Checkerboard'

The patch of real estate Boston College inhabits has been well traveled over the millennia: What is now Chestnut Hill was located near the South Pole a half-billion years ago, and 200 million years from now may lie where the West Coast is currently.

Prof. Emeritus James Skehan, SJ (Geology), director emeritus of the Weston Observatory, charts the trajectory of the Heights and environs in a colloquium, "Tracking New England's Moves on the Global Checkerboard: One Billion Years Ago to Present," at Weston Observatory, Oct. 20, from 7-9 p.m., and Oct. 27, from 7-9 p.m.

According to Fr. Skehan, a large section of eastern North America, including the Boston area, formed between 500 million and 750 million years ago as a volcanic chain off the coasts of what are now the West African and South American subcontinents, then clustered near the South Pole. The Avalon terrane, the geological micro-continent upon which Boston lies, drifted over time, joining the North American land mass in a continental collision 400 million years ago.

The bluff that separates Middle from Lower Campus is a scar from when continents broke apart some 200 million years ago, he says.

Fr. Skehan says the slow-motion continental migration continues, with North America and Europe, and South America and Africa, drifting away from each other at a rate of three-quarters of an inch per year. At that rate, in 200 million years the Atlantic Ocean will be much larger and the Pacific much smaller, while Chestnut Hill will be where the West Coast is now. -Mark Sullivan •