Continental Drift
A hypothesis stating that a single large landmass broke up into smaller landmasses to form the continents.
What is Continental Drift?
The theory explaining how large pieces of the lithosphere, called plates, move and change shape.
What is plate tectonics theory?
The supercontinent that formed 300 million years ago and started to break up 200 million years ago.
What is Pangaea?
The layer of plastic rock that underlies the
tectonic plates.
What is the asthenosphere?
Undersea mountain ranges through the center of which run steep, narrow valleys.
What is mid-ocean ridges?
The solid, outer layer of the Earth that consists of the crust and the rigid upper part of the mantle.
What is the lithosphere?
A single, large ocean that covered Earth's surface during the time the supercontinent Pangaea existed.
What is Panthalassa?
Two plates grind past each other at what?
What is a transform boundary
The study of the alignment of magnetic minerals in rock.
What is paleomagnetism?
What is the asthenosphere?
The process by which supercontinents form and break apart over millions of years.
What is the supercontinent cycle?
The region along tectonic plate boundaries
where one plate moves beneath another.
What is a subduction zone?
When the new ocean lithosphere forms as magma rises to Earth's surface and solidifies at a mid-ocean ridge.
What is sea-floor spreading?
The boundary between tectonic plates that are colliding.
What is convergent boundaries?
The process by which Earth's crust breaks apart; can occur within continential crust or oceanic crust.
What is rifting?
Convection occurs because heated material
becomes?
What is less dense and rises?
A boundary between tectonic plates that are sliding past each other horizontally.
What is transform boundary?
The boundary between tectonic plates that are moving away from each other.
What is divergent boundary?
A piece of lithosphere that has unique geologic history and may be part of larger pieces of lithosphere, such as a continent.
What is terrare?
Support for Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift includes evidence of changes in?
What is climatic patterns?