Geology

This subcategory gathers theories belonging to geology: the models describing the solid Earth's structure, composition and the processes that build and reshape it over deep time, including plate tectonics and continental drift, the rock cycle and mineral-formation sequences, structural and stratigraphic principles used to read the rock record, and the historical shift from catastrophist to uniformitarian thinking about Earth's past. A theory placed here explains a solid-Earth process on a geological timescale, distinct from a theory of weather, climate or ocean circulation, which stay at the broader Earth Sciences level.