Abstract

S. Warren Carey is an internationally known geologist at the University of Tasmania in Australia. His publications on tectonics go back to his Doctor of Science thesis entitled Tectonic Evolution of New Guinea and Melanesia done in 1938 at the University of Sydney. He has regularly published in this area since that time, being a proponent of Wegener's continental drift theory when it was generally being ridiculed. In 1953 Carey sent a paper to the American Geophysical Union proposing "the transport of continental blocks on the back of convection cells" with subduction of the crust at "the downgoing limb of the convection cell." The paper was rejected at the time "on the grounds that it was naive" (p. 9). In 1971 Carey resubmitted this paper with an attached letter that included the following paragraph: