The Palmason model is a depth, distance, temperature and heat flow gradient model of crustal accretion mechanism through the

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

lithosphere which denotes the spreading material trajectories from a rift axis. The material erupting at the rift axis will tend to sink down, due to thermal subsidence and spreading, to a depth of many kilometers, while lava flows spreading to a distance of many kilometers away from the rift axis on the surface will sink down to shallower depth. Surface erosion can expose such preserved materials. The model was developed in the 1970s and 80s by Guðmundur Pálmason (1928–2004), once one of

's best

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

players.Guðmundur Pálmason's chess games
Chessgames.com. The name given to the model, however, misrepresents

Icelandic naming conventions Icelandic names are names used by people from Iceland. Icelandic surnames are different from most other naming systems in the modern Western world by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic: they indicate the father (or mother) of the child ...

; Pálmason is a

patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...

, not a surname, and in Iceland he would have properly been referred to by his given first name, Guðmundur.

References

{{reflist Plate tectonics