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Continental Drift - School Essays

Continental Drift

is the theory that the positions of the earth's continents have changed a lot through geologic time. The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the first comprehensive theory of in 1912, on the basis of the way the continents fit together on the opposing Atlantic coasts and paleontology correlation on both sides of the Atlantic. He proposed the theory that about 200 million years ago there was one great big continent, or supercontinent, called Pangaea. Pangaea split into two big landmasses, Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
The present continents separated in the next geologic era, the Mesozoic. In this process, the Earth's rotation caused horizontal alterations in the granite ...

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crust is formed of 13 continental plates. The boundaries of the zones are where tectonic activities occur, and where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions tend to happen. The plate tectonics theory was thought up in the 1960s and 1970s, with ideas taken from Wegener�s earlier thoughts. Earlier, Wegener and other scientists had noted that continental crust grows by additions and that a ridge in the middle of the ocean runs almost all the way around the world. It was also noted that continental plates tear apart, drift apart, and collide with each other.
Seafloor Spreading Geophysicists, mapping the ocean floor with an instrument that measures magnetic fields, showed that the rocks on one side of the midocean ridge produced an opposing image geomagnetic pattern of the rocks on the other side. When they dated these rocks, it showed that those nearest the ridge is obviously younger than those farther away are. They came to the conclusion that the midocean ridge is where new ocean ...

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Continental Drift. (2005, March 30). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Continental-Drift/24573

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 3/30/2005 08:03:36 PM
Category: Science & Nature
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 726
Pages: 3

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