Eustasy to plate tectonics: unifying ideas on the evolution of the major features of the earth’s surface

During the last 200 years geomorphology has emerged and developed into a respectable science. One of its greatest problems was the inheritance of a diversity of models, mainly catastrophic, put forward to explain the general evolution of continents and oceans. The search for a rational model of this evolution inevitably became entangled with the search for the cause of major landforms such as mountains, plains and plateaux. Such theorising on the origins of the chief features of the earth’s surface has never lost its popular appeal.