Continental vs Plate Tectonics Theory

(Featuring: Inductive Method)

PREPARED BY:
Shiela Mae Degras
Joy Ann Doce
CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY
• First proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912:
-250 million years ago, all the continents were
combined into one super-continent called
“pangaea”.
-The continents gradually drifted apart to where
they are today.
• Wegner didn’t make up this theory out of
the blue - like all scientist, he based it on
evidence.
CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY
• Wegener’s theory was rejected by scientists
because he could not explain what force pushes
or pulls continents.
Wegener searched and found
three main pieces of evidence
Geologic Evidence

Fit of Continents
Across the Atlantic

Mountain ranges in
South America line
up exactly with
those in Africa!
Fossil Evidence

Plant and animal fossils found on the coastlines of different

continent.
Climate Change Evidence
EVIDENCE BUT NO METHOD
• While Wegner presented compelling
evidence, there was no explanation for
HOW the continents drifted.

• The question remained: “ If the

continents drift, what is making them
move?
SEA FLOOR DISCOVERIES
• WW II: Military Spending

• U.S Navy mapped seafloor with sonar in order

to help ships and submarines navigate.

• They expected to find that the ocean floor was

a vast, flat plain. What they found was
shocking.
SEA FLOOR DISCOVERIES
• Instead of miles and miles of flat surface,
they found that the ocean floor had:
- oceanic ridges - submerged mountain ranges
- fracture zones - cracks perpedicular to ridge
- tenches - narrow, deep gashes
- seamounts - drowned undersea islands
• This suggested that the sea floor was not simply
“covered up” continental crust, but was made of
different materials and at a different time.
SEA FLOOR DISCOVERIES
• What scientists discovered was that the sea
floor was being constantly “recycled”. The
youngest rocks were created from magma
rising to the surface, hardening and pushing
aside the older rock.
• Scientist called this process “sea floor
spreading”
PLATE TECTONICS THEORY
The theory that the Earth’s outermost
layer is fragmented into a dozen or more
large and small plates that move relative
to one another as they ride on top of
hotter, more mobile material.
What Are Tectonic Plates?
• A plate is a large, rigid slab of
solid rock.
-Plates are formed from the
lithosphere: the crust and the upper
part of the mantle.
• The plates “float” on the slowly
flowing asthenosphere: the
lower part o the mantle.
• The plates include both the land
and ocean floor.
• The Mohoriovicic discontinuity
or Moho is the boundary
between the crust and the
mantle.
What Drives Tectonic Plates?
• The slow movement of hot,
softened mantle lies below
rigid plates.
• The hot, softened rock in the
mantle moves in a circular
manner in a convection flow -
the heated, molten rock rises
to the surface, spreads, and
begins to cool, and then sinks
back down to be reheated and
rises again.
EARTH’S PLATE
Movement of the Plates Over
Time
Progression of Indian Land Mass
Plate Boundaries
Different Types of Boundaries
 DIFFERENT TYPES OF BOUNDARIES
• Convergent boundaries come together
- Places where crust is destroyed as one
plate dives under another.
• Divergent boundaries spread apart
-Places where new crust is generated as
the plates pull away from each other.
- New crust is created from magma
pushing up from the mantle.
• Transform boundaries slides again to
each other
- Places where crust is neither produced
nor destroyed as the plates slide
horizontally past each other.
OCEANIC-CONTINENTAL COVERGENCE
• The oceanic plate subducts under the continental plate because it has lower
density.
 OCEANIC-OCEANIC COVERGENCE
• When two oceanic plates converge, one is usually subducted under the other.
• An older oceanic plate is colder, therfore more dense and less buoyant, and will
subduct under a younger, hotter, less dense, and more buoyant oceanic plate.
• The subduction in oceanic-oceanic plate convergence can result in the
formation of volcanoes.
 CONTINENTAL-CONTINENTAL COVERGENCE
• When two continens meet head-on, neither is subducted because the
continental rocks are relatively light and, like two colliding icebergs, resist
downward mountain.
• Instead, the crust tends to buckle and be pushed upward or siddeways.
 DIVERGENCE
• Divergent boundaries occur along spreading centers where the plates are
moving apart and new crust is created by magma pushing up fromt the mantle.
 TRANSFORM
• The zone between two plates that slide past one another is called a transform-
fault boundary, or transform boundary.
• These large faults connect two spreading centers or connect trenches.
• Most transform faults are found on the ocean floor.