The Puzzle of the Continents
The scientist who proposed in 1912 that the continents were once joined.
Alfred Wegener
Mesosaurus and Glossopteris are examples of this type of evidence for continental drift.
Fossil evidence
Wegener could not explain what force moved the continents. Scientists call this missing piece a "this."
A mechanism
A deep, narrow valley in the ocean floor where one plate sinks beneath another.
A trench
Animated movie where the squirrel Scrat, chasing his acorn, accidentally breaks apart the supercontinent.
Ice Age: Continental Drift
The name of the single supercontinent that existed before today's continents separated.
Pangaea
A freshwater reptile found only in South America and Africa that could not have crossed an ocean.
Mesosaurus
Wegener suggested continents did this through the ocean floor, which is impossible because rock is too strong.
Plowed through it
A plate boundary where plates slide past each other horizontally.
A transform boundary
Disney movie where a girl sails to restore the heart of Te Fiti and faces Te Kā, a lava monster.
Moana
The two continents whose coastlines fit together like puzzle pieces.
South America and Africa
A fern whose fossils appear on five now-separated continents.
Glossopteris
Technology used during and after World War II to map the ocean floor by timing an echo.
Sonar
The point underground where an earthquake begins.
The focus
2015 film where Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a rescue pilot during a massive California earthquake.
San Andreas
In everyday speech a theory is a guess, but in science it means this.
A well-tested explanation backed by many lines of evidence
Mountain ranges in eastern North America match ranges on this continent in age and rock type.
Europe
The continuous underwater mountain chain discovered down the middle of the Atlantic.
A mid-ocean ridge
The sinking of a denser plate beneath another plate and into the mantle.
Subduction
2008 film where Brendan Fraser falls through an Icelandic volcano into a hidden world underground.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
A matching coastline alone is not proof of drift because it could be this.
A coincidence
Coal in Antarctica and glacial scratches in tropical Africa and India are this type of evidence.
Climate evidence
Sediment near the ridge was surprisingly thin, which means the crust there is this.
Young
A volcanic area far from a plate boundary, fed by a rising column of hot mantle.
A hotspot
1997 film where lava erupts beneath Los Angeles and flows down Wilshire Boulevard.
Volcano