Plate Tectonics

(Continental Drift and Sea-Floor Spreading)

 1912 – Alfred Wegener noticed that

• Continents seemed
to fit together…

• Although there
are overlaps
• First proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. (German Meteorologist)
Hypothesized the existence of a giant super- continent he named
Pangaea

Pangaea (Gk pan, “all” and gaia, “Earth”) 225 million years ago
 The hypothesis that continents are mobile.
CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY
(His idea was debated, ridiculed, discarded.)

Before Continental Drift

What were they thinking?

• The oceans and the continents have been permanently fixed through
time.
• Evidence of drastic changes interpreted as…
– Shrinkage effects
– Rebound from thick sediment loading
– The result of “upheaval”
 Continental Drift - evidence
• Fit of continents
– Map fit of
contintents
generated at 100
meters beneath the
sea
– Overlaps and
margins due to
erosion and
deposition
Continental Drift - evidence
• Rock type
– Rock type of
comparable age and
composition

– Appalachians
terminate off the
coast of
Newfoundland and
continue in the
British Isles and
Scandinavia
 Continental Drift - evidence
• Paleoclimate
– 220 m.y. ago
ice sheets
covered extensive
areas of the
southern
hemisphere
 The Continental Drift Debate
• Criticisms to Drift Theory
– No mechanism for moving continents
• Wegener suggested that continents plowed
through the ocean crust, much like ice breakers
cut through ice.
• He invoked centrifugal force.
(Neither of these were tenable).

• Why wasn’t Continental Drift accepted?

– The hypothesis was correct, but had flaws.

Geology 211, Physical Geology

©, 2002, Ron Parker
The Driving
Mechanism?!
Convection cells
that move the
lithosphere in a
conveyor-like
fashion
 Transect Across the Atlantic

Geology 211, Physical Geology

©, 2002, DIGIT, Prentice-Hall ©, 2002, Ron Parker
©, 2002, DIGIT, Prentice-Hall
From the idea of Sea Floor Spreading…
… a mechanism for moving the continents, which the
continental drift theory did not satisfy.
 Sea Floor Spreading
• In 1960, Harry Hess, wrote an “essay in
geopoetry” describing evidence for sea-floor
spreading.
– Mid – ocean ridge
– Guyots
– Age of the oceanic crust Ocean crust is everywhere
younger than 180 mya (geologically young).
• Upwelling mantle at the MOR causes lava at rift
• Sea-floor moves away from this location
• Sea-floor dives back into the mantle at trenches.

Geology 211, Physical Geology

©, 2002, Ron Parker
 Plate Tectonics Theory
• Proposes that
– the Earth’s outer shell is made up of numerous individual
rigid sections of the lithosphere called plates
– Each plate moves as a unit over the material of the
asthenosphere.
– These plates move and interact with each other producing
earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and the crust itself.

• John Tuzo Wilson,

in 1965, unified
Continental drift and
seafloor
spreading….
 Plates
• The “Plates” of Plate Tectonics are made of fragments
of lithosphere.

• The lithosphere, the outermost layer of Earth, is made

of…
– The uppermost mantle, and
– The overlying crust.
Plate Tectonics: The New Paradigm

Plate tectonics yields a unified explanation for:

– Earth’s major surface processes
– The distribution of earthquakes
– The distribution of volcanoes
– The origin of continents and ocean basins
– The past distributions of plants and animals.
– The mechanism for deformation and orogenesis.
– The driving engine of the rock cycle