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Chapter 1 Lesson 2
1.
Wegener learned
that the fossils of one dinosaur, was discovered in both South America and Africa. The fossils were NOT found anywhere else in the world. This can be explained if South America and Africa were once joined.
2.
Greenland
today lies near the Arctic Circle and is mostly covered in ice. However, fossils of tropical plants can be found on its shores. Another example is South Africa. We know that Africa has a warm climate, but its rocks were deeply scratched by ice sheets millions of years ago.
3.
This is
Wegeners best evidence. The rocks that make up the continents matched each other. Rocks in Brazil matched the rocks found in western Africa. Limestone found in the Appalachian Mountains [North America] matched the limestone in Scotland.
is the huge supercontinent that included all of our continents today Long ago, all the continents were a single land mass until they started to split apart [200 million years ago] However he was unable to explain HOW the continents moved
The Theory of Plate Tectonics explains how plates and their continents move
until the mid 1900s, when scientists proved that tectonic plates moved! are huge underwater mountain ranges; they are present in every ocean and circles the entire Earth [seams of a baseball]
1. ridges form along cracks in the crust. Molten rock rises through these cracks, cools, and forms new oceanic crust. Old crust is pulled away as the sea floor spreads apart. They are called SPREADING CENTERS.
2. Scientists drilled into the sea floor and obtained rock samples. These samples revealed that the youngest rock is near the ridge, while the oldest rock is farthest away
3. Why isnt the Earth getting larger if the sea-floor is spreading? The answer is OCEAN TRENCH. At these ocean trenches, dense oceanic crust is sinking into the asthenosphere. Old crust is being destroyed at the same rate as the new crust forming.
SOFT ROCK in the asthenosphere rises, cools, and sinks [dense rock], then is heated and rises again [think water boiling inside a pot]
This sinking and rising motion is called a a motion that transfers heat energy in a material This is a VERY SLOW process [few cms a year]; but over a million years its a long distance!
also help move huge plates Slab pull occurs when gravity pulls a cool, dense plate down into the asthenosphere Ridge push occurs when material from a mid-ocean ridge slides downhill FROM the ridge