The Continental Drift Theory: The Aspects Of The Continental Drift Theory

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Today, when people want to cross over the ocean and get to another continent, they have to take plane for eight or more hours or ship for few days. However, if people were born millions of years ago, they might easily cross a boundary of tow continents by accident. Because according to the continental drift theory, ages ago, the continents today were a completed one piece and called Pangaea. (Sandner, 506-507) The continental drift theory is a theory first proposed by a German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1915. This theory suggests that parts of the Earth’s crust which are called continents were slowly drifting above a liquid core. He didn’t randomly come up with this idea with whim, there are actually some solid evidence to support this theory. For example, the boundaries of South America’s eastern coastline and Africa’s western coastline are seemingly matched on a world map. Also, you can find similar animals and plants fossils around different continent shores, like the fossil of Mesosaurus was found both in South Africa and Brazil. (Rejoined continents [This Dynamic Earth, USGS].) Not only fossil proves this theory, but also same living animals are found on two different continents. Furthermore, Wegener found out that same rocks and mountain ranges begin on one continent, and end at one coastline; but on another continent cross the ocean, there are similar rocks and mountain ranges appear. For instance, people found rocks with same types and rocks in Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, and Norway which are places really far away from each other. Last but not least, base on climatic evidence, scientists later pointed out that there are glacial striations in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Anta... ... middle of paper ... ... at hot spots rather than plate boundaries. The Hawaiian Islands are an example of a chain of shield volcanoes. Compare to composite volcanoes, shield volcanoes’ magma is much thinner, therefore less gas will be trapped which leads to a less explosive eruption. Rift eruptions describe when magma erupts along cracks in the lithosphere. Rift eruptions are much less violent compare to other volcanic eruptions, but it releases a great amount of lava. Rift eruptions are common at ocean ridges like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (Sandner, 532-534) Maybe earthquakes and volcanic activities sound really scary to people, and always bring destructive damage to people, they are natural phenomenons that we should learn to understand and accept. It is impossible for people to completely avoid them all, but we can use our knowledge to predict them and reduce the damage to the least.

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