In the 1960s the study of paleomagnetism produced a revolution in the Earth Sciences, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics crowning many decades of debate about continental drift. Michael W. McElhinny published a book in 1973 that described these then-new developments. Although since 1973 several books have appeared on paleomagnetism, none have attempted to present and update the paleomagnetic contributions to Phanerozoic tectonics in the last two decades in a systematic way, that is with an emphasis on the paleomagnetic results available for a wide range of continental elements, rather than on paleomagnetic theory. This book attempts to remedy this situation in ways more fully introduced in the Prologue (Chapter 1).

It is a tremendous pleasure to acknowledge the invaluable help of many colleagues. As experts in tectonics, David Rowley and Shangyou Nie of the University of Chicago and Chris Scotese of the University of Texas at Arlington collectively produced some thirty single-spaced pages of scientific comments and suggestions for improvement. I am equally indebted to Eric Essene of the University of Michigan and John Geissman of the University of New Mexico, who also read through the entire text; they corrected many stylistic problems and helped clarify conceptually difficult issues. Paleomagnetists such as Michael McElhinny, Ron Merrill, and Valerian Bachtadse also read the entire book and provided many helpful comments. Many others (in alphabetical order) read parts or chapters: Enrique Banda, Bob Butler, Rob Hargraves, Dennis Kent, Cathérine Kissel, Carlo Laj, Hamza Lotfy, Bill Lowrie, Chad McCabe, Joe Meert, Neil Opdyke, Josep Maria Pares, Herve Perroud, Steve Potts, Mustafa Saribudak, Trond Torsvik, Ben van der Pluijm, Zhongmin Wang and Hans Wensink.