CompuServe Messages

Questions on Apparent Polar Wandering and the determination of continental land masses, and how this determination relates to the magnetic pole reversals. I'm not sure I fully understand this concept of Apparent Polar Wandering and the determination of the early earths continental areas if there is evidence that the magnetic poles have gone through complete reversals over the ages. And if the mag. poles have gone through these complete reversals are they by a gradual process ( where the N. pole slides around to the south, like turning a bar mag. clockwise ), or was it instantaneous? And how have we discovered these reversals?? Let me see if I understand this right from my readings; The assumption in the book I am studying is that the mag poles have coincided with the geog poles over "x" amount of years. This book stated that for the last few thousand years the avg positions of these 2 have coincided. First of all what is this "few thousand" years? On a geological timescale this does not seem like a long time. From this perspective I understand that we presently take magnetite samples from different continents (same age of course) and just run the clock back to determine position. So does this mean that we can only determine the continents positions accurately only back to a few thousand years. Yet I have seen drawings that seem to take the land masses back much further than a few thousand years. And how does the mag. pole reversals play into this picture? It would seem that we would need to determine these reversal periods and find magnetite samples within this range to complete the picture backwards ( a tedious process?), and how accurate can we measure these million year+ aged magnetite samples? Not sure if this all came across as I intended, but any help would be appreciated. Thanks, gary