Plate tectonics

1
Plate tectonics
The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of
the 20th century.
Remnants of the Farallon Plate, deep in Earth's mantle. It is thought
that much of the plate initially went under North America
(particularly the western United States and southwest Canada) at a
very shallow angle, creating much of the mountainous terrain in the
area (particularly the southern Rocky Mountains).
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[1]
Plate tectonics (from the Late Latin tectonicus, from the Greek: "pertaining to building")
[2]
is a
scientific theory that describes the large-scale motion of Earth's lithosphere. The model builds on the concept of
continental drift which was developed during the first few decades of the 20th century. The geoscientific community
accepted the theory after the concepts of seafloor spreading were developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The lithosphere, which is the rigid outermost shell of a planet (on Earth, the crust and upper mantle), is broken up
into tectonic plates. On Earth, there are seven or eight major plates (depending on how they are defined) and many
minor plates. Where plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of boundary; convergent, divergent, or
transform. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation occur along these plate
boundaries. The lateral relative movement of the plates typically varies from zero to 100mm annually.
[3]
Plate tectonics
2
Tectonic plates are composed of oceanic lithosphere and thicker continental lithosphere, each topped by its own kind
of crust. Along convergent boundaries, subduction carries plates into the mantle; the material lost is roughly
balanced by the formation of new (oceanic) crust along divergent margins by seafloor spreading. In this way, the
total surface of the globe remains the same. This prediction of plate tectonics is also referred to as the conveyor belt
principle. Earlier theories (that still have some supporters) propose gradual shrinking (contraction) or gradual
expansion of the globe.
[4]
Tectonic plates are able to move because the Earth's lithosphere has a higher strength than the underlying
asthenosphere. Lateral density variations in the mantle result in convection. Plate movement is thought to be driven
by a combination of the motion of the seafloor away from the spreading ridge (due to variations in topography and
density of the crust, which result in differences in gravitational forces) and drag, downward suction, at the
subduction zones. Another explanation lies in the different forces generated by the rotation of the globe and the tidal
forces of the Sun and Moon. The relative importance of each of these factors and their relationship to each other is
unclear, and still the subject of much debate.
Key principles
The outer layers of the Earth are divided into the lithosphere and asthenosphere. This is based on differences in
mechanical properties and in the method for the transfer of heat. Mechanically, the lithosphere is cooler and more
rigid, while the asthenosphere is hotter and flows more easily. In terms of heat transfer, the lithosphere loses heat by
conduction, whereas the asthenosphere also transfers heat by convection and has a nearly adiabatic temperature
gradient. This division should not be confused with the chemical subdivision of these same layers into the mantle
(comprising both the asthenosphere and the mantle portion of the lithosphere) and the crust: a given piece of mantle
may be part of the lithosphere or the asthenosphere at different times depending on its temperature and pressure.
The key principle of plate tectonics is that the lithosphere exists as separate and distinct tectonic plates, which ride
on the fluid-like (visco-elastic solid) asthenosphere. Plate motions range up to a typical 1040mm/year
(Mid-Atlantic Ridge; about as fast as fingernails grow), to about 160mm/year (Nazca Plate; about as fast as hair
grows).
[5]
The driving mechanism behind this movement is described separately below.
Tectonic lithosphere plates consist of lithospheric mantle overlain by either or both of two types of crustal material:
oceanic crust (in older texts called sima from silicon and magnesium) and continental crust (sial from silicon and
aluminium). Average oceanic lithosphere is typically 100km (62mi) thick;
[6]
its thickness is a function of its age: as
time passes, it conductively cools and subjacent cooling mantle is added to its base. Because it is formed at
mid-ocean ridges and spreads outwards, its thickness is therefore a function of its distance from the mid-ocean ridge
where it was formed. For a typical distance that oceanic lithosphere must travel before being subducted, the
thickness varies from about 6km (4mi) thick at mid-ocean ridges to greater than 100km (62mi) at subduction
zones; for shorter or longer distances, the subduction zone (and therefore also the mean) thickness becomes smaller
or larger, respectively.
[7]
Continental lithosphere is typically ~200km thick, though this varies considerably between
basins, mountain ranges, and stable cratonic interiors of continents. The two types of crust also differ in thickness,
with continental crust being considerably thicker than oceanic (35km vs. 6km).
[8]
The location where two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Plate boundaries are commonly associated with
geological events such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features such as mountains, volcanoes,
mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches. The majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries,
with the Pacific Plate's Ring of Fire being the most active and most widely known today. These boundaries are
discussed in further detail below. Some volcanoes occur in the interiors of plates, and these have been variously
attributed to internal plate deformation
[9]
and to mantle plumes.
As explained above, tectonic plates may include continental crust or oceanic crust, and many plates contain both. For
example, the African Plate includes the continent and parts of the floor of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The
distinction between oceanic crust and continental crust is based on their modes of formation. Oceanic crust is formed
Plate tectonics
3
at sea-floor spreading centers, and continental crust is formed through arc volcanism and accretion of terranes
through tectonic processes, though some of these terranes may contain ophiolite sequences, which are pieces of
oceanic crust considered to be part of the continent when they exit the standard cycle of formation and spreading
centers and subduction beneath continents. Oceanic crust is also denser than continental crust owing to their different
compositions. Oceanic crust is denser because it has less silicon and more heavier elements ("mafic") than
continental crust ("felsic").
[10]
As a result of this density stratification, oceanic crust generally lies below sea level
(for example most of the Pacific Plate), while continental crust buoyantly projects above sea level (see the page
isostasy for explanation of this principle).
Types of plate boundaries
Main article: List of tectonic plate interactions
Three types of plate boundaries exist,
[11]
with a fourth, mixed type, characterized by the way the plates move relative
to each other. They are associated with different types of surface phenomena. The different types of plate boundaries
are:
1. Transform boundaries (Conservative) occur where two lithospheric plates slide, or perhaps more accurately,
grind past each other along transform faults, where plates are neither created nor destroyed. The relative motion
of the two plates is either sinistral (left side toward the observer) or dextral (right side toward the observer).
Transform faults occur across a spreading center. Strong earthquakes can occur along fault. The San Andreas
Fault in California is an example of a transform boundary exhibiting dextral motion.
2. Divergent boundaries (Constructive) occur where two plates slide apart from each other. At zones of
ocean-to-ocean rifting, divergent boundaries form by seafloor spreading, allowing for the formation of new ocean
basin. As the continent splits, the ridge forms at the spreading center, the ocean basin expands, and finally, the
plate area increases causing many small volcanoes and/or shallow earthquakes. At zones of continent-to-continent
rifting, divergent boundaries may cause new ocean basin to form as the continent splits, spreads, the central rift
collapses, and ocean fills the basin. Active zones of Mid-ocean ridges (e.g., Mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific
Rise), and continent-to-continent rifting (such as Africa's East African Rift and Valley, Red Sea) are examples of
divergent boundaries.
3. Convergent boundaries (Destructive) (or active margins) occur where two plates slide toward each other to form
either a subduction zone (one plate moving underneath the other) or a continental collision. At zones of
continent-to-continent subduction (e.g., Western South America, and Cascade Mountains in Western United
States), the dense oceanic lithosphere plunges beneath the less dense continent. Earthquakes then trace the path of
the downward-moving plate as it descends into asthenosphere, a trench forms, and as the subducted plate partially
melts, magma rises to form continental volcanoes. At zones of ocean-to-ocean subduction (e.g., the Andes
mountain range in South America, Aleutian islands, Mariana islands, and the Japanese island arc), older, cooler,
denser crust slips beneath less dense crust. This causes earthquakes and a deep trench to form in an arc shape. The
upper mantle of the subducted plate then heats and magma rises to form curving chains of volcanic islands. Deep
marine trenches are typically associated with subduction zones, and the basins that develop along the active
boundary are often called "foreland basins". The subducting slab contains many hydrous minerals which release
their water on heating. This water then causes the mantle to melt, producing volcanism. Closure of ocean basins
can occur at continent-to-continent boundaries (e.g., Himalayas and Alps): collision between masses of granitic
continental lithosphere; neither mass is subducted; plate edges are compressed, folded, uplifted.
4. Plate boundary zones occur where the effects of the interactions are unclear, and the boundaries, usually
occurring along a broad belt, are not well defined and may show various types of movements in different
episodes.
Plate tectonics
4
Three types of plate boundary.
Driving forces of plate motion
Plate motion based on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data from NASA
JPL
[12]
. The vectors show direction and magnitude of motion.
Plate tectonics is basically a kinematic
phenomenon. Scientists agree on the
observation and deduction that the plates
have moved with respect to one another but
continue to debate as to how and when. A
major question remains as to what
geodynamic mechanism motors plate
movement. Here, science diverges in
different theories.
It is generally accepted that tectonic plates
are able to move because of the relative
density of oceanic lithosphere and the
relative weakness of the asthenosphere.
Dissipation of heat from the mantle is
acknowledged to be the original source of
the energy required to drive plate tectonics
through convection or large scale upwelling and doming. The current view, though still a matter of some debate,
asserts that as a consequence, a powerful source of plate motion is generated due to the excess density of the oceanic
lithosphere sinking in subduction zones. When the new crust forms at mid-ocean ridges, this oceanic lithosphere is
initially less dense than the underlying asthenosphere, but it becomes denser with age as it conductively cools and
thickens. The greater density of old lithosphere relative to the underlying asthenosphere allows it to sink into the
deep mantle at subduction zones, providing most of the driving force for plate movement. The weakness of the
asthenosphere allows the tectonic plates to move easily towards a subduction zone. Although subduction is believed
to be the strongest force driving plate motions, it cannot be the only force since there are plates such as the North
American Plate which are moving, yet are nowhere being subducted. The same is true for the enormous Eurasian
Plate. The sources of plate motion are a matter of intensive research and discussion among scientists. One of the
main points is that the kinematic pattern of the movement itself should be separated clearly from the possible
geodynamic mechanism that is invoked as the driving force of the observed movement, as some patterns may be
explained by more than one mechanism.
[13]
In short, the driving forces advocated at the moment can be divided into
three categories based on the relationship to the movement: mantle dynamics related, gravity related (mostly
secondary forces), and Earth rotation related.
Plate tectonics
5
Driving forces related to mantle dynamics
Main article: Mantle convection
For much of the last quarter century, the leading theory of the driving force behind tectonic plate motions envisaged
large scale convection currents in the upper mantle which are transmitted through the asthenosphere. This theory was
launched by Arthur Holmes and some forerunners in the 1930s and was immediately recognized as the solution for
the acceptance of the theory as originally discussed in the papers of Alfred Wegener in the early years of the century.
However, despite its acceptance, it was long debated in the scientific community because the leading ("fixist") theory
still envisaged a static Earth without moving continents up until the major breakthroughs of the early sixties.
Two and threedimensional imaging of Earth's interior (seismic tomography) shows a varying lateral density
distribution throughout the mantle. Such density variations can be material (from rock chemistry), mineral (from
variations in mineral structures), or thermal (through thermal expansion and contraction from heat energy). The
manifestation of this varying lateral density is mantle convection from buoyancy forces.
[14]
How mantle convection directly and indirectly relates to plate motion is a matter of ongoing study and discussion in
geodynamics. Somehow, this energy must be transferred to the lithosphere for tectonic plates to move. There are
essentially two types of forces that are thought to influence plate motion: friction and gravity.
Basal drag (friction): Plate motion driven by friction between the convection currents in the asthenosphere and
the more rigid overlying lithosphere.
Slab suction (gravity): Plate motion driven by local convection currents that exert a downward pull on plates in
subduction zones at ocean trenches. Slab suction may occur in a geodynamic setting where basal tractions
continue to act on the plate as it dives into the mantle (although perhaps to a greater extent acting on both the
under and upper side of the slab).
Lately, the convection theory has been much debated as modern techniques based on 3D seismic tomography still
fail to recognize these predicted large scale convection cells. Therefore, alternative views have been proposed:
In the theory of plume tectonics developed during the 1990s, a modified concept of mantle convection currents is
used. It asserts that super plumes rise from the deeper mantle and are the drivers or substitutes of the major
convection cells. These ideas, which find their roots in the early 1930s with the so-called "fixistic" ideas of the
European and Russian Earth Science Schools, find resonance in the modern theories which envisage hot
spots/mantle plumes which remain fixed and are overridden by oceanic and continental lithosphere plates over time
and leave their traces in the geological record (though these phenomena are not invoked as real driving mechanisms,
but rather as modulators). Modern theories that continue building on the older mantle doming concepts and see plate
movements as a secondary phenomena are beyond the scope of this page and are discussed elsewhere (for example
on the plume tectonics page).
Another theory is that the mantle flows neither in cells nor large plumes but rather as a series of channels just below
the Earth's crust which then provide basal friction to the lithosphere. This theory is called "surge tectonics" and
became quite popular in geophysics and geodynamics during the 1980s and 1990s.
[15]
Driving forces related to gravity
Forces related to gravity are usually invoked as secondary phenomena within the framework of a more general
driving mechanism such as the various forms of mantle dynamics described above.
Gravitational sliding away from a spreading ridge: According to many authors, plate motion is driven by the higher
elevation of plates at ocean ridges.
[16]
As oceanic lithosphere is formed at spreading ridges from hot mantle material,
it gradually cools and thickens with age (and thus adds distance from the ridge). Cool oceanic lithosphere is
significantly denser than the hot mantle material from which it is derived and so with increasing thickness it
gradually subsides into the mantle to compensate the greater load. The result is a slight lateral incline with increased
distance from the ridge axis.
Plate tectonics
6
This force is regarded as a secondary force and is often referred to as "ridge push". This is a misnomer as nothing is
"pushing" horizontally and tensional features are dominant along ridges. It is more accurate to refer to this
mechanism as gravitational sliding as variable topography across the totality of the plate can vary considerably and
the topography of spreading ridges is only the most prominent feature. Other mechanisms generating this
gravitational secondary force include flexural bulging of the lithosphere before it dives underneath an adjacent plate
which produces a clear topographical feature that can offset, or at least affect, the influence of topographical ocean
ridges, and mantle plumes and hot spots, which are postulated to impinge on the underside of tectonic plates.
Slab-pull: Current scientific opinion is that the asthenosphere is insufficiently competent or rigid to directly cause
motion by friction along the base of the lithosphere. Slab pull is therefore most widely thought to be the greatest
force acting on the plates. In this current understanding, plate motion is mostly driven by the weight of cold, dense
plates sinking into the mantle at trenches.
[17]
Recent models indicate that trench suction plays an important role as
well. However, as the North American Plate is nowhere being subducted, yet it is in motion presents a problem. The
same holds for the African, Eurasian, and Antarctic plates.
Gravitational sliding away from mantle doming: According to older theories, one of the driving mechanisms of the
plates is the existence of large scale asthenosphere/mantle domes which cause the gravitational sliding of lithosphere
plates away from them. This gravitational sliding represents a secondary phenomenon of this basically vertically
oriented mechanism. This can act on various scales, from the small scale of one island arc up to the larger scale of an
entire ocean basin.
[18]
Driving forces related to Earth rotation
Alfred Wegener, being a meteorologist, had proposed tidal forces and pole flight force as the main driving
mechanisms behind continental drift; however, these forces were considered far too small to cause continental
motion as the concept then was of continents plowing through oceanic crust. Therefore, Wegener later changed his
position and asserted that convection currents are the main driving force of plate tectonics in the last edition of his
book in 1929.
However, in the plate tectonics context (accepted since the seafloor spreading proposals of Heezen, Hess, Dietz,
Morley, Vine, and Matthews (see below) during the early 1960s), oceanic crust is suggested to be in motion with the
continents which caused the proposals related to Earth rotation to be reconsidered. In more recent literature, these
driving forces are:
1. Tidal drag due to the gravitational force the Moon (and the Sun) exerts on the crust of the Earth
2. 2. Shear strain of the Earth globe due to N-S compression related to its rotation and modulations;
3. Pole flight force: equatorial drift due to rotation and centrifugal effects: tendency of the plates to move from the
poles to the equator ("Polflucht");
4. The Coriolis effect acting on plates when they move around the globe;
5. Global deformation of the geoid due to small displacements of rotational pole with respect to the Earth's crust;
6. 6. Other smaller deformation effects of the crust due to wobbles and spin movements of the Earth rotation on a
smaller time scale.
For these mechanisms to be overall valid, systematic relationships should exist all over the globe between the
orientation and kinematics of deformation and the geographical latitudinal and longitudinal grid of the Earth itself.
Ironically, these systematic relations studies in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the
twentieth century underline exactly the opposite: that the plates had not moved in time, that the deformation grid was
fixed with respect to the Earth equator and axis, and that gravitational driving forces were generally acting vertically
and caused only local horizontal movements (the so-called pre-plate tectonic, "fixist theories"). Later studies
(discussed below on this page), therefore, invoked many of the relationships recognized during this pre-plate
tectonics period to support their theories (see the anticipations and reviews in the work of van Dijk and
collaborators).
[19]
Plate tectonics
7
Of the many forces discussed in this paragraph, tidal force is still highly debated and defended as a possible principle
driving force of plate tectonics. The other forces are only used in global geodynamic models not using plate tectonics
concepts (therefore beyond the discussions treated in this section) or proposed as minor modulations within the
overall plate tectonics model.
In 1973, George W. Moore
[20]
of the USGS and R. C. Bostrom
[21]
presented evidence for a general westward drift of
the Earth's lithosphere with respect to the mantle. He concluded that tidal forces (the tidal lag or "friction") caused by
the Earth's rotation and the forces acting upon it by the Moon are a driving force for plate tectonics. As the Earth
spins eastward beneath the moon, the moon's gravity ever so slightly pulls the Earth's surface layer back westward,
just as proposed by Alfred Wegener (see above). In a more recent 2006 study,
[22]
scientists reviewed and advocated
these earlier proposed ideas. It has also been suggested recently in Lovett (2006) that this observation may also
explain why Venus and Mars have no plate tectonics, as Venus has no moon and Mars' moons are too small to have
significant tidal effects on the planet. In a recent paper,
[23]
it was suggested that, on the other hand, it can easily be
observed that many plates are moving north and eastward, and that the dominantly westward motion of the Pacific
ocean basins derives simply from the eastward bias of the Pacific spreading center (which is not a predicted
manifestation of such lunar forces). In the same paper the authors admit, however, that relative to the lower mantle,
there is a slight westward component in the motions of all the plates. They demonstrated though that the westward
drift, seen only for the past 30Ma, is attributed to the increased dominance of the steadily growing and accelerating
Pacific plate. The debate is still open.
Relative significance of each driving force mechanism
The actual vector of a plate's motion is a function of all the forces acting on the plate; however, therein lies the
problem regarding what degree each process contributes to the overall motion of each tectonic plate.
The diversity of geodynamic settings and the properties of each plate must clearly result from differences in the
degree to which multiple processes are actively driving each individual plate. One method of dealing with this
problem is to consider the relative rate at which each plate is moving and to consider the available evidence of each
driving force on the plate as far as possible.
One of the most significant correlations found is that lithospheric plates attached to downgoing (subducting) plates
move much faster than plates not attached to subducting plates. The Pacific plate, for instance, is essentially
surrounded by zones of subduction (the so-called Ring of Fire) and moves much faster than the plates of the Atlantic
basin, which are attached (perhaps one could say 'welded') to adjacent continents instead of subducting plates. It is
thus thought that forces associated with the downgoing plate (slab pull and slab suction) are the driving forces which
determine the motion of plates, except for those plates which are not being subducted.
[17]
The driving forces of plate
motion continue to be active subjects of on-going research within geophysics and tectonophysics.
Plate tectonics
8
Development of the theory
Further information: Timeline of the development of tectonophysics
Summary
Detailed map showing the tectonic plates with their movement vectors.
In line with other previous and
contemporaneous proposals, in 1912
the meteorologist Alfred Wegener
amply described what he called
continental drift, expanded in his 1915
book The Origin of Continents and
Oceans
[24]
and the scientific debate
started that would end up fifty years
later in the theory of plate tectonics.
[25]
Starting from the idea (also expressed
by his forerunners) that the present
continents once formed a single land
mass (which was called Pangea later
on) that drifted apart, thus releasing the continents from the Earth's mantle and likening them to "icebergs" of low
density granite floating on a sea of denser basalt.
[26]
Supporting evidence for the idea came from the dove-tailing
outlines of South America's east coast and Africa's west coast, and from the matching of the rock formations along
these edges. Confirmation of their previous contiguous nature also came from the fossil plants Glossopteris and
Gangamopteris, and the therapsid or mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus, all widely distributed over South America,
Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia. The evidence for such an erstwhile joining of these continents was patent to
field geologists working in the southern hemisphere. The South African Alex du Toit put together a mass of such
information in his 1937 publication Our Wandering Continents, and went further than Wegener in recognising the
strong links between the Gondwana fragments.
But without detailed evidence and a force sufficient to drive the movement, the theory was not generally accepted:
the Earth might have a solid crust and mantle and a liquid core, but there seemed to be no way that portions of the
crust could move around. Distinguished scientists, such as Harold Jeffreys and Charles Schuchert, were outspoken
critics of continental drift.
Despite much opposition, the view of continental drift gained support and a lively debate started between "drifters"
or "mobilists" (proponents of the theory) and "fixists" (opponents). During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the former
reached important milestones proposing that convection currents might have driven the plate movements, and that
spreading may have occurred below the sea within the oceanic crust. Concepts close to the elements now
incorporated in plate tectonics were proposed by geophysicists and geologists (both fixists and mobilists) like
Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, and Umbgrove.
One of the first pieces of geophysical evidence that was used to support the movement of lithospheric plates came
from paleomagnetism. This is based on the fact that rocks of different ages show a variable magnetic field direction,
evidenced by studies since the midnineteenth century. The magnetic north and south poles reverse through time,
and, especially important in paleotectonic studies, the relative position of the magnetic north pole varies through
time. Initially, during the first half of the twentieth century, the latter phenomenon was explained by introducing
what was called "polar wander" (see apparent polar wander), i.e., it was assumed that the north pole location had
been shifting through time. An alternative explanation, though, was that the continents had moved (shifted and
rotated) relative to the north pole, and each continent, in fact, shows its own "polar wander path". During the late
1950s it was successfully shown on two occasions that these data could show the validity of continental drift: by
Plate tectonics
9
Keith Runcorn in a paper in 1956,
[27]
and by Warren Carey in a symposium held in March 1956.
[28]
The second piece of evidence in support of continental drift came during the late 1950s and early 60s from data on
the bathymetry of the deep ocean floors and the nature of the oceanic crust such as magnetic properties and, more
generally, with the development of marine geology
[29]
which gave evidence for the association of seafloor spreading
along the mid-oceanic ridges and magnetic field reversals, published between 1959 and 1963 by Heezen, Dietz,
Hess, Mason, Vine & Matthews, and Morley.
[30]
Simultaneous advances in early seismic imaging techniques in and around Wadati-Benioff zones along the trenches
bounding many continental margins, together with many other geophysical (e.g. gravimetric) and geological
observations, showed how the oceanic crust could disappear into the mantle, providing the mechanism to balance the
extension of the ocean basins with shortening along its margins.
All this evidence, both from the ocean floor and from the continental margins, made it clear around 1965 that
continental drift was feasible and the theory of plate tectonics, which was defined in a series of papers between 1965
and 1967, was born, with all its extraordinary explanatory and predictive power. The theory revolutionized the Earth
sciences, explaining a diverse range of geological phenomena and their implications in other studies such as
paleogeography and paleobiology.
Continental drift
For more details on this topic, see Continental drift.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, geologists assumed that the Earth's major features were fixed, and that most
geologic features such as basin development and mountain ranges could be explained by vertical crustal movement,
described in what is called the geosynclinal theory. Generally, this was placed in the context of a contracting planet
Earth due to heat loss in the course of a relatively short geological time.
Alfred Wegener in Greenland in the winter of 1912-13.
It was observed as early as 1596 that the opposite coasts of
the Atlantic Oceanor, more precisely, the edges of the
continental shelveshave similar shapes and seem to have
once fitted together.
[31]
Since that time many theories were proposed to explain this
apparent complementarity, but the assumption of a solid
Earth made these various proposals difficult to accept.
[32]
The discovery of radioactivity and its associated heating
properties in 1895 prompted a re-examination of the
apparent age of the Earth.
[33]
This had previously been
estimated by its cooling rate and assumption the Earth's
surface radiated like a black body.
[34]
Those calculations
had implied that, even if it started at red heat, the Earth would have dropped to its present temperature in a few tens
of millions of years. Armed with the knowledge of a new heat source, scientists realized that the Earth would be
much older, and that its core was still sufficiently hot to be liquid.
By 1915, after having published a first article in 1912,
[35]
Alfred Wegener was making serious arguments for the
idea of continental drift in the first edition of The Origin of Continents and Oceans.
[24]
In that book (re-issued in four
successive editions up to the final one in 1936), he noted how the east coast of South America and the west coast of
Africa looked as if they were once attached. Wegener was not the first to note this (Abraham Ortelius, Antonio
Snider-Pellegrini, Eduard Suess, Roberto Mantovani and Frank Bursley Taylor preceded him just to mention a few),
but he was the first to marshal significant fossil and paleo-topographical and climatological evidence to support this
simple observation (and was supported in this by researchers such as Alex du Toit). Furthermore, when the rock
strata of the margins of separate continents are very similar it suggests that these rocks were formed in the same way,
Plate tectonics
10
implying that they were joined initially. For instance, parts of Scotland and Ireland contain rocks very similar to
those found in Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Furthermore, the Caledonian Mountains of Europe and parts of
the Appalachian Mountains of North America are very similar in structure and lithology.
However, his ideas were not taken seriously by many geologists, who pointed out that there was no apparent
mechanism for continental drift. Specifically, they did not see how continental rock could plow through the much
denser rock that makes up oceanic crust. Wegener could not explain the force that drove continental drift, and his
vindication did not come until after his death in 1930.
Floating continents, paleomagnetism, and seismicity zones
Global earthquake epicenters, 19631998
As it was observed early that although
granite existed on continents, seafloor
seemed to be composed of denser basalt, the
prevailing concept during the first half of
the twentieth century was that there were
two types of crust, named "sial" (continental
type crust) and "sima" (oceanic type crust).
Furthermore, it was supposed that a static
shell of strata was present under the
continents. It therefore looked apparent that
a layer of basalt (sial) underlies the
continental rocks.
However, based on abnormalities in plumb
line deflection by the Andes in Peru, Pierre
Bouguer had deduced that less-dense mountains must have a downward projection into the denser layer underneath.
The concept that mountains had "roots" was confirmed by George B. Airy a hundred years later, during study of
Himalayan gravitation, and seismic studies detected corresponding density variations. Therefore, by the mid-1950s,
the question remained unresolved as to whether mountain roots were clenched in surrounding basalt or were floating
on it like an iceberg.
During the 20th century, improvements in and greater use of seismic instruments such as seismographs enabled
scientists to learn that earthquakes tend to be concentrated in specific areas, most notably along the oceanic trenches
and spreading ridges. By the late 1920s, seismologists were beginning to identify several prominent earthquake
zones parallel to the trenches that typically were inclined 4060 from the horizontal and extended several hundred
kilometers into the Earth. These zones later became known as Wadati-Benioff zones, or simply Benioff zones, in
honor of the seismologists who first recognized them, Kiyoo Wadati of Japan and Hugo Benioff of the United States.
The study of global seismicity greatly advanced in the 1960s with the establishment of the Worldwide Standardized
Seismograph Network (WWSSN) to monitor the compliance of the 1963 treaty banning above-ground testing of
nuclear weapons. The much improved data from the WWSSN instruments allowed seismologists to map precisely
the zones of earthquake concentration world wide.
Meanwhile, debates developed around the phenomena of polar wander. Since the early debates of continental drift,
scientists had discussed and used evidence that polar drift had occurred because continents seemed to have moved
through different climatic zones during the past. Furthermore, paleomagnetic data had shown that the magnetic pole
had also shifted during time. Reasoning in an opposite way, the continents might have shifted and rotated, while the
pole remained relatively fixed. The first time the evidence of magnetic polar wander was used to support the
movements of continents was in a paper by Keith Runcorn in 1956,
[27]
and successive papers by him and his
students Ted Irving (who was actually the first to be convinced of the fact that paleomagnetism supported continental
drift) and Ken Creer.
Plate tectonics
11
This was immediately followed by a symposium in Tasmania in March 1956.
[36]
In this symposium, the evidence
was used in the theory of an expansion of the global crust. In this hypothesis the shifting of the continents can be
simply explained by a large increase in size of the Earth since its formation. However, this was unsatisfactory
because its supporters could offer no convincing mechanism to produce a significant expansion of the Earth.
Certainly there is no evidence that the moon has expanded in the past 3 billion years; other work would soon show
that the evidence was equally in support of continental drift on a globe with a stable radius.
During the thirties up to the late fifties, works by Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, Umbgrove, and numerous others
outlined concepts that were close or nearly identical to modern plate tectonics theory. In particular, the English
geologist Arthur Holmes proposed in 1920 that plate junctions might lie beneath the sea, and in 1928 that convection
currents within the mantle might be the driving force.
[37]
Often, these contributions are forgotten because:
At the time, continental drift was not accepted.
Some of these ideas were discussed in the context of abandoned fixistic ideas of a deforming globe without
continental drift or an expanding Earth.
They were published during an episode of extreme political and economic instability that hampered scientific
communication.
Many were published by European scientists and at first not mentioned or given little credit in the papers on sea
floor spreading published by the American researchers in the 1960s.
Mid-oceanic ridge spreading and convection
For more details on Mid-ocean ridge, see Seafloor spreading.
In 1947, a team of scientists led by Maurice Ewing utilizing the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's research
vessel Atlantis and an array of instruments, confirmed the existence of a rise in the central Atlantic Ocean, and found
that the floor of the seabed beneath the layer of sediments consisted of basalt, not the granite which is the main
constituent of continents. They also found that the oceanic crust was much thinner than continental crust. All these
new findings raised important and intriguing questions.
[38]
The new data that had been collected on the ocean basins also showed particular characteristics regarding the
bathymetry. One of the major outcomes of these datasets was that all along the globe, a system of mid-oceanic ridges
was detected. An important conclusion was that along this system, new ocean floor was being created, which led to
the concept of the "Great Global Rift". This was described in the crucial paper of Bruce Heezen (1960),
[39]
which
would trigger a real revolution in thinking. A profound consequence of seafloor spreading is that new crust was, and
still is, being continually created along the oceanic ridges. Therefore, Heezen advocated the so-called "expanding
Earth" hypothesis of S. Warren Carey (see above). So, still the question remained: how can new crust be
continuously added along the oceanic ridges without increasing the size of the Earth? In reality, this question had
been solved already by numerous scientists during the forties and the fifties, like Arthur Holmes, Vening-Meinesz,
Coates and many others: The crust in excess disappeared along what were called the oceanic trenches, where
so-called "subduction" occurred. Therefore, when various scientists during the early sixties started to reason on the
data at their disposal regarding the ocean floor, the pieces of the theory quickly fell into place.
The question particularly intrigued Harry Hammond Hess, a Princeton University geologist and a Naval Reserve
Rear Admiral, and Robert S. Dietz, a scientist with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey who first coined the term
seafloor spreading. Dietz and Hess (the former published the same idea one year earlier in Nature,
[40]
but priority
belongs to Hess who had already distributed an unpublished manuscript of his 1962 article by 1960)
[41]
were among
the small handful who really understood the broad implications of sea floor spreading and how it would eventually
agree with the, at that time, unconventional and unaccepted ideas of continental drift and the elegant and mobilistic
models proposed by previous workers like Holmes.
In the same year, Robert R. Coats of the U.S. Geological Survey described the main features of island arc subduction
in the Aleutian Islands. His paper, though little noted (and even ridiculed) at the time, has since been called
Plate tectonics
12
"seminal" and "prescient". In reality, it actually shows that the work by the European scientists on island arcs and
mountain belts performed and published during the 1930s up until the 1950s was applied and appreciated also in the
United States.
If the Earth's crust was expanding along the oceanic ridges, Hess and Dietz reasoned like Holmes and others before
them, it must be shrinking elsewhere. Hess followed Heezen, suggesting that new oceanic crust continuously spreads
away from the ridges in a conveyor beltlike motion. And, using the mobilistic concepts developed before, he
correctly concluded that many millions of years later, the oceanic crust eventually descends along the continental
margins where oceanic trenches very deep, narrow canyons are formed, e.g. along the rim of the Pacific Ocean
basin. The important step Hess made was that convection currents would be the driving force in this process, arriving
at the same conclusions as Holmes had decades before with the only difference that the thinning of the ocean crust
was performed using Heezen's mechanism of spreading along the ridges. Hess therefore concluded that the Atlantic
Ocean was expanding while the Pacific Ocean was shrinking. As old oceanic crust is "consumed" in the trenches
(like Holmes and others, he thought this was done by thickening of the continental lithosphere, not, as now
understood, by underthrusting at a larger scale of the oceanic crust itself into the mantle), new magma rises and
erupts along the spreading ridges to form new crust. In effect, the ocean basins are perpetually being "recycled," with
the creation of new crust and the destruction of old oceanic lithosphere occurring simultaneously. Thus, the new
mobilistic concepts neatly explained why the Earth does not get bigger with sea floor spreading, why there is so little
sediment accumulation on the ocean floor, and why oceanic rocks are much younger than continental rocks.
Magnetic striping
Seafloor magnetic striping.
A demonstration of magnetic striping. (The
darker the color is the closer it is to normal
polarity)
For more details on this topic, see VineMatthewsMorley hypothesis.
Beginning in the 1950s, scientists like Victor Vacquier, using magnetic
instruments (magnetometers) adapted from airborne devices developed
during World War II to detect submarines, began recognizing odd
magnetic variations across the ocean floor. This finding, though
unexpected, was not entirely surprising because it was known that
basaltthe iron-rich, volcanic rock making up the ocean
floorcontains a strongly magnetic mineral (magnetite) and can
locally distort compass readings. This distortion was recognized by
Icelandic mariners as early as the late 18th century. More important,
because the presence of magnetite gives the basalt measurable
magnetic properties, these newly discovered magnetic variations
provided another means to study the deep ocean floor. When newly
formed rock cools, such magnetic materials recorded the Earth's
magnetic field at the time.
As more and more of the seafloor was mapped during the 1950s, the
magnetic variations turned out not to be random or isolated
occurrences, but instead revealed recognizable patterns. When these
magnetic patterns were mapped over a wide region, the ocean floor
showed a zebra-like pattern: one stripe with normal polarity and the
adjoining stripe with reversed polarity. The overall pattern, defined by
these alternating bands of normally and reversely polarized rock,
became known as magnetic striping, and was published by Ron G. Mason and co-workers in 1961, who did not find,
though, an explanation for these data in terms of sea floor spreading, like Vine, Matthews and Morley a few years
later.
[42]
Plate tectonics
13
The discovery of magnetic striping called for an explanation. In the early 1960s scientists such as Heezen, Hess and
Dietz had begun to theorise that mid-ocean ridges mark structurally weak zones where the ocean floor was being
ripped in two lengthwise along the ridge crest (see the previous paragraph). New magma from deep within the Earth
rises easily through these weak zones and eventually erupts along the crest of the ridges to create new oceanic crust.
This process, at first denominated the "conveyer belt hypothesis" and later called seafloor spreading, operating over
many millions of years continues to form new ocean floor all across the 50,000km-long system of midocean
ridges.
Only four years after the maps with the "zebra pattern" of magnetic stripes were published, the link between sea floor
spreading and these patterns was correctly placed, independently by Lawrence Morley, and by Fred Vine and
Drummond Matthews, in 1963
[43]
now called the Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis. This hypothesis linked these
patterns to geomagnetic reversals and was supported by several lines of evidence:
[44]
1. 1. the stripes are symmetrical around the crests of the mid-ocean ridges; at or near the crest of the ridge, the rocks
are very young, and they become progressively older away from the ridge crest;
2. 2. the youngest rocks at the ridge crest always have present-day (normal) polarity;
3. 3. stripes of rock parallel to the ridge crest alternate in magnetic polarity (normal-reversed-normal, etc.), suggesting
that they were formed during different epochs documenting the (already known from independent studies) normal
and reversal episodes of the Earth's magnetic field.
By explaining both the zebra-like magnetic striping and the construction of the mid-ocean ridge system, the seafloor
spreading hypothesis (SFS) quickly gained converts and represented another major advance in the development of
the plate-tectonics theory. Furthermore, the oceanic crust now came to be appreciated as a natural "tape recording" of
the history of the geomagnetic field reversals (GMFR) of the Earth's magnetic field. Today, extensive studies are
dedicated to the calibration of the normal-reversal patterns in the oceanic crust on one hand and known timescales
derived from the dating of basalt layers in sedimentary sequences (magnetostratigraphy) on the other, to arrive at
estimates of past spreading rates and plate reconstructions.
Definition and refining of the theory
After all these considerations, Plate Tectonics (or, as it was initially called "New Global Tectonics") became quickly
accepted in the scientific world, and numerous papers followed that defined the concepts:
In 1965, Tuzo Wilson who had been a promotor of the sea floor spreading hypothesis and continental drift from
the very beginning
[45]
added the concept of transform faults to the model, completing the classes of fault types
necessary to make the mobility of the plates on the globe work out.
[46]
A symposium on continental drift was held at the Royal Society of London in 1965 which must be regarded as the
official start of the acceptance of plate tectonics by the scientific community, and which abstracts are issued as
Blacket, Bullard & Runcorn (1965). In this symposium, Edward Bullard and co-workers showed with a computer
calculation how the continents along both sides of the Atlantic would best fit to close the ocean, which became
known as the famous "Bullard's Fit".
In 1966 Wilson published the paper that referred to previous plate tectonic reconstructions, introducing the
concept of what is now known as the "Wilson Cycle".
[47]
In 1967, at the American Geophysical Union's meeting, W. Jason Morgan proposed that the Earth's surface
consists of 12 rigid plates that move relative to each other.
[48]
Two months later, Xavier Le Pichon published a complete model based on 6 major plates with their relative
motions, which marked the final acceptance by the scientific community of plate tectonics.
[49]
In the same year, McKenzie and Parker independently presented a model similar to Morgan's using translations
and rotations on a sphere to define the plate motions.
[50]
Plate tectonics
14
Implications for biogeography
Continental drift theory helps biogeographers to explain the disjunct biogeographic distribution of present day life
found on different continents but having similar ancestors.
[51]
In particular, it explains the Gondwanan distribution of
ratites and the Antarctic flora.
Plate reconstruction
Main article: Plate reconstruction
Reconstruction is used to establish past (and future) plate configurations, helping determine the shape and make-up
of ancient supercontinents and providing a basis for paleogeography.
Defining plate boundaries
Current plate boundaries are defined by their seismicity.
[52]
Past plate boundaries within existing plates are identified
from a variety of evidence, such as the presence of ophiolites that are indicative of vanished oceans.
[53]
Past plate motions
Tectonic motion first began around three billion years ago.
Various types of quantitative and semi-quantitative information are available to constrain past plate motions. The
geometric fit between continents, such as between west Africa and South America is still an important part of plate
reconstruction. Magnetic stripe patterns provide a reliable guide to relative plate motions going back into the Jurassic
period. The tracks of hotspots give absolute reconstructions, but these are only available back to the Cretaceous.
[54]
Older reconstructions rely mainly on paleomagnetic pole data, although these only constrain the latitude and rotation,
but not the longitude. Combining poles of different ages in a particular plate to produce apparent polar wander paths
provides a method for comparing the motions of different plates through time.
[55]
Additional evidence comes from
the distribution of certain sedimentary rock types, faunal provinces shown by particular fossil groups, and the
position of orogenic belts.
[54]
Formation and break-up of continents
The movement of plates has caused the formation and break-up of continents over time, including occasional
formation of a supercontinent that contains most or all of the continents. The supercontinent Columbia or Nuna
formed during a period of 2,000to1,800
[56]
million years ago and broke up about 1,500to1,300
[57]
million years
ago. The supercontinent Rodinia is thought to have formed about 1 billion years ago and to have embodied most or
all of Earth's continents, and broken up into eight continents around 600
[58]
million years ago. The eight continents
later re-assembled into another supercontinent called Pangaea; Pangaea broke up into Laurasia (which became North
America and Eurasia) and Gondwana (which became the remaining continents).
The Himalayas, the world's tallest mountain range, are assumed to have been formed by the collision of two major
plates. Before uplift, they were covered by the Tethys Ocean.
Plate tectonics
15
Current plates
Main article: List of tectonic plates
Depending on how they are defined,
there are usually seven or eight
"major" plates: African, Antarctic,
Eurasian, North American, South
American, Pacific, and
Indo-Australian. The latter is
sometimes subdivided into the Indian
and Australian plates.
There are dozens of smaller plates, the
seven largest of which are the Arabian,
Caribbean, Juan de Fuca, Cocos,
Nazca, Philippine Sea and Scotia.
The current motion of the tectonic
plates is today determined by remote
sensing satellite data sets, calibrated with ground station measurements.
Other celestial bodies (planets, moons)
The appearance of plate tectonics on terrestrial planets is related to planetary mass, with more massive planets than
Earth expected to exhibit plate tectonics. Earth may be a borderline case, owing its tectonic activity to abundant
water
[59]
(silica and water form a deep eutectic.)
Venus
See also: Geology of Venus
Venus shows no evidence of active plate tectonics. There is debatable evidence of active tectonics in the planet's
distant past; however, events taking place since then (such as the plausible and generally accepted hypothesis that the
Venusian lithosphere has thickened greatly over the course of several hundred million years) has made constraining
the course of its geologic record difficult. However, the numerous well-preserved impact craters have been utilized
as a dating method to approximately date the Venusian surface (since there are thus far no known samples of
Venusian rock to be dated by more reliable methods). Dates derived are dominantly in the range 500to750
[60]
million years ago, although ages of up to 1,200
[61]
million years ago have been calculated. This research has led to
the fairly well accepted hypothesis that Venus has undergone an essentially complete volcanic resurfacing at least
once in its distant past, with the last event taking place approximately within the range of estimated surface ages.
While the mechanism of such an impressive thermal event remains a debated issue in Venusian geosciences, some
scientists are advocates of processes involving plate motion to some extent.
One explanation for Venus' lack of plate tectonics is that on Venus temperatures are too high for significant water to
be present.
[62]
The Earth's crust is soaked with water, and water plays an important role in the development of shear
zones. Plate tectonics requires weak surfaces in the crust along which crustal slices can move, and it may well be that
such weakening never took place on Venus because of the absence of water. However, some researchers remain
convinced that plate tectonics is or was once active on this planet.
Plate tectonics
16
Mars
See also: Geology of Mars
Mars is considerably smaller than Earth and Venus, and there is evidence for ice on its surface and in its crust.
In the 1990s, it was proposed that Martian Crustal Dichotomy was created by plate tectonic processes.
[63]
Scientists
today disagree, and believe that it was created either by upwelling within the Martian mantle that thickened the crust
of the Southern Highlands and formed Tharsis
[64]
or by a giant impact that excavated the Northern Lowlands.
[65]
Valles Marineris is a tectonic boundary.
Observations made of the magnetic field of Mars by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in 1999 showed patterns of
magnetic striping discovered on this planet. Some scientists interpreted these as requiring plate tectonic processes,
such as seafloor spreading. However, their data fail a "magnetic reversal test", which is used to see if they were
formed by flipping polarities of a global magnetic field.
[66]
Galilean satellites of Jupiter
Some of the satellites of Jupiter have features that may be related to plate-tectonic style deformation, although the
materials and specific mechanisms may be different from plate-tectonic activity on Earth.
Titan, moon of Saturn
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was reported to show tectonic activity in images taken by the Huygens Probe,
which landed on Titan on January 14, 2005.
[67]
Exoplanets
On Earth-sized planets, plate tectonics is more likely if there are oceans of water; however, in 2007, two independent
teams of researchers came to opposing conclusions about the likelihood of plate tectonics on larger
super-earths
[68][69]
with one team saying that plate tectonics would be episodic or stagnant
[70]
and the other team
saying that plate tectonics is very likely on super-earths even if the planet is dry.
[59]
References
Notes
[1] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Geology2& action=edit
[2] Little, Fowler & Coulson 1990.
[3] Read & Watson 1975.
[4] Scalera & Lavecchia 2006.
[5] [5] , .
[6] Turcotte & Schubert 2002, p.5.
[7] Turcotte & Schubert 2002.
[8] Turcotte & Schubert 2002, p.3.
[9] [9] Foulger 2010.
[10] Schmidt & Harbert 1998.
[11] [11] Meissner 2002, p.100.
[12] http:/ / sideshow.jpl. nasa. gov/ mbh/ series. html
[13] [13] , .
[14] Tanimoto & Lay 2000.
[15] [15] Smoot et al. 1996.
[16] [16] , .
[17] Conrad & Lithgow-Bertelloni 2002.
[18] [18] , , .
[19] [19] , ).
[20] [20] Moore 1973.
Plate tectonics
17
[21] [21] Bostrom 1971.
[22] [22] Scoppola et al. 2006.
[23] [23] Torsvik et al. 2010.
[24] [24] Wegener 1929.
[25] [25] Hughes 2001a.
[26] [26] , .
[27] [27] Runcorn 1956.
[28] [28] Carey 1956.
[29] [29] see for example the milestone paper of .
[30] [30] , .
[31] Kious & Tilling 1996.
[32] [32] Frankel 1987.
[33] [33] Joly 1909.
[34] [34] Thomson 1863.
[35] [35] Wegener 1912.
[36] [36] ; see also .
[37] [37] ; see also , .
[38] [38] , .
[39] [39] Heezen 1960.
[40] [40] Dietz 1961.
[41] [41] Hess 1962.
[42] [42] , .
[43] Vine & Matthews 1963.
[44] [44] See summary in
[45] [45] Wilson 1963.
[46] [46] Wilson 1965.
[47] [47] Wilson 1966.
[48] [48] Morgan 1968.
[49] [49] Le Pichon 1967.
[50] McKenzie & Parker 1967.
[51] Moss & Wilson 1998.
[52] [52] Condie 1997.
[53] [53] Lliboutry 2000.
[54] [54] Torsvik 2008.
[55] [55] Butler 1992.
[56] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ timescale/ ?Ma=20001800
[57] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ timescale/ ?Ma=15001300
[58] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ timescale/ ?Ma=600
[59] Valencia, O'Connell & Sasselov 2007.
[60] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ timescale/ ?Ma=500750
[61] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ timescale/ ?Ma=1,200
[62] [62] Kasting 1988.
[63] [63] Sleep 1994.
[64] Zhong & Zuber 2001.
[65] Andrews-Hanna, Zuber & Banerdt 2008.
[66] [66] Harrison 2000.
[67] [67] Soderblom et al. 2007.
[68] Convection scaling and subduction on Earth and super-Earths (http:/ / www. sciencedirect. com/ science/ article/ pii/ S0012821X09004178),
Diana Valencia, Richard J. O'Connell, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 286, Issues 34, 15 September 2009, Pages 492502,
http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1016/ j. epsl. 2009. 07.015,
[69] Plate tectonics on super-Earths: Equally or more likely than on Earth (http:/ / www. sciencedirect. com/ science/ article/ pii/
S0012821X11004559), http:/ / dx. doi.org/ 10.1016/ j. epsl. 2011. 07. 029, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 310, Issues 34, 15
October 2011, Pages 252261, H.J. van Heck, P.J. Tackley
[70] GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L19204, 4 PP., 2007, doi:10.1029/2007GL030598, Geological consequences of
super-sized Earths (http:/ / www. agu.org/ pubs/ crossref/ 2007/ 2007GL030598. shtml), C. O'Neill, A. Lenardic
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External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plate tectonics.
This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics (http:/ / pubs. usgs. gov/ gip/ dynamic/ dynamic. html). USGS.
Understanding Plate Tectonics (http:/ / pubs. usgs. gov/ publications/ text/ understanding. html). USGS.
The PLATES Project (http:/ / www. ig. utexas. edu/ research/ projects/ plates/ ). Jackson School of Geosciences.
An explanation of tectonic forces (http:/ / www. tectonic-forces. org). Example of calculations to show that Earth
Rotation could be a driving force.
Bird, P. (2003); An updated digital model of plate boundaries (http:/ / peterbird. name/ publications/
2003_PB2002/ 2003_PB2002. htm).
Map of tectonic plates (http:/ / snobear. colorado. edu/ Markw/ Mountains/ 03/ week3. html).
GPlates (http:/ / www. gplates. org/ ), desktop software for the interactive visualization of plate-tectonics.
MORVEL plate velocity estimates and information (http:/ / www. geology. wisc. edu/ ~chuck/ MORVEL/ ). C.
DeMets, D. Argus, & R. Gordon.
Google Map of the Topography of Plate Tectonics (http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/
ms?msid=202977755949863934429. 0004f306429540aff190e& msa=0& ll=-2. 811371,-22. 5& spn=139.
996839,320. 625) that enables you to zoom in on submarine mid ocean ridges, fracture zones, ocean trenches,
thermal vents and submarine volcanoes.
Videos
Khan Academy Explanation of evidence (http:/ / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=6EdsBabSZ4g)
750 million years of global tectonic activity (http:/ / www. ucmp. berkeley. edu/ geology/ tectonics. html). Movie.
Article Sources and Contributors
25
Article Sources and Contributors
Plate tectonics Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=617913110 Contributors: (jarbarf), -- April, 2help, A.M.962, A876, AJR, AManWithNoPlan, Aaron Brenneman, Abeg92,
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Image:Plates tect2 en.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Plates_tect2_en.svg License: Public Domain Contributors: USGS
Image:Farallon Plate.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Farallon_Plate.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: NASA
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