Category:Catastrophism

This category collects catastrophist accounts of Earth and solar system history — the position that the geological and biological record was shaped substantially by sudden, violent events rather than solely by the slow uniform processes of Lyell's uniformitarianism.

Catastrophism has a mixed standing. Some of it has been vindicated and absorbed into the mainstream: the Alvarez impact hypothesis for the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction, the Missoula flood scablands, and the general acceptance that impacts and flood basalts have driven mass extinctions. Other strands remain firmly outside it, most notably the Velikovskian tradition of recent planetary encounters within human memory, and interpretations of myth as a record of celestial events.

Entries here include impact and extinction work, electrical and plasma catastrophism associated with the Electric Universe, rapid geological change including that proposed under expansion tectonics, and reconstructions of ancient sky myth.