HISTORY OF GEOLOGY SINCE 1962 201 Figure Magnetic anomalies offshore from Cape Mendocino, California, to the north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia In 1961, Raff and Mason interpreted these stripes as most likely due to high and low magnetic intensities in linear patterns of mafic oceanic rocks They drew the lettered lines as fault traces In subsequent years, such ‘zebra stripes’ would be seen as evidence of magnetic field reversals with normally magnetized rocks (black) alternating with reversely magnetized ones (white) (Reprinted by courtesy of Raff and the Geological Society of America.) Matthews of Cambridge University: ‘Magnetic Anomalies over Oceanic Ridges’ Like Morley, Vine and Matthews assumed that convection, sea-floor spreading, and reversals of magnetic polarity all occur, and that the ocean floors consist of basalt that becomes strongly magnetized at the ridge crests Today, the Vine–Matthews paper is widely seen as the founding paper of plate tectonics, but at the time it was poorly received and largely ignored for the next three years It was not even included by their Department of Geophysics at Cambridge University in its list of important contributions for 1963! Years later, when attitudes changed, and Morley’s story came out, the Earth science community began to speak of the Vine– Matthews–Morley (VMM) hypothesis Morley then realized that he had gained more fame by having his paper rejected than he would have by its publication In 1963, all three of the basic assumptions listed by Vine and Matthews were suspect to geoscientists Professor Harold Jeffreys, at Cambridge University, argued in every edition of his book, The Earth, beginning in 1924, that the mantle of the contracting Earth