What are Plate Tectonics?

1008 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: An essay on plate tectonics

Describe geographic evidence collected in the last part of the 20th century to support the theory of continental drift. Some of the geographical evidence collected in the last part of the 20th century to support the theory of the continental drift is the discovery of plate tectonics Hess and Deitz modified the theory called "Sea-floor Spreading". Along the seafloor features that supported the sea-floor spreading hypothesis were: mid-oceanic ridges, deep sea trenches, island arcs, geomagnetic patterns, and fault patterns. ancient fossils found on different continents were often similar or identical, the exploring naturalists were finding out that living plants and animals on the different continents were often very different. new groups of animals and plants were found on almost every island and continent they visited. Most biological species seemed to be unique to the region or continent in which they were found. these seemingly contradictory observations can be seen through Plate tectonics . When the different land masses were connected, the same or closely related plants and animals inhabited each. After the land masses were separated, the different species were geographically isolated from one other by the waters of the ocean. Life on the different continents had evolved into different species, because the populations were separated from each other by such great distances. It is possible to link, the breakup of the continents with the types of animals found on each. The longer the period of separation, the more differences between species were found because they had evolved. For example, all of the indigenous mammals found in Australia are marsupials. There are no naturally occurring placental mammals. This suggests th... ... middle of paper ... ...ome lava and the whole entire process starts all over in full circle and the tectonic continues evolveing. Works Cited Trefil, J., & Hazen, R. M. (2013). The Sciences: An Integrated Approach, 7th Edition (7th ed.). John Wiley and Sons. Retrieved Feb 2014 Collins, G. P. (2009). TECTONIC PLATES. (cover story). Scientific American, 301(3), 100. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.cecybrary.com http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/continental_drift.aspx Richmond, Elliot. "Continental Drift." Animal Sciences. 2002. Retrieved March 13, 2014 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3400500081.html http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tecmech.html http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/the-himalayas/tectonic-motion-making-the-himalayas/6342/ http://platetectonics.com/book/page_7.asp http://platetectonics.com/book/page_14.asp

Show More
Related

  • The Columbian Exchange : Trading Corn For Smallpox

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    To set the stage, we must go back 270 million years ago when a majority of the earth’s land masses were collected together in a single continent, a supercontinent, named Pangaea (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1). Historian Alfred Crosby explained that this collected all of earth’s land based biology into a single place, creating a single Darwinian “arena for competition” (Crosby, 1). Or in other words, one big evolutionary pot. Crosby also explains that 180 million years ago, Pangea split into two major land masses, what is now the Americas in the Western Hemisphere as one land mass and Euro-Asia and Africa as the second lass mass (Crosby, 1). What was once a single evolutionary pot, was now two, allowing for plant and animal life to take different evolutionary paths. These two worlds remained relatively separate from each other until the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers. That contact between the old world and the new world brought two distinct evolutionary arenas crashing into each other and returned a majority of the earth’s landmass into a single Darwinian pot, (Crosby, 1) This was Crosby’s re-knitting of the torn “seams of Pangaea.”

    Read More

  • Magmatism and Island Arcs

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    Four tectonic environments in which magmatism occurs: destructive plate margins, constructive plate margins/divergent plate boundaries, oceanic intraplate and continental intraplate. Arcs are magmatic products of destructive plate margins (stern, 2001) which are referred to as sites where new continental crust is created and old oceanic crust is subducted back into the mantle (Hawkesworth , Hergt, McDermott, Ellam, 1991). An island arc is a form of an arc produced by the subduction of an oceanic plate beneath another oceanic plate (Hu, 2013). Island arcs are characterised by high large ion lithophile elements and low high field strength elements ((Hawkesworth , Hergt, McDermott, Ellam, 1991). New oceanic crust is created at the mid ocean ridges and by mass balance is then destroyed (recycled back into the mantle) at the subduction zones (Jarred, 2003). As it forms it undergoes hydrothermal alteration where the composition is changed from olivine, plagioclase and glass dominated to being dominated by clay minerals i.e. low grade metamorphism (green schist facies) (Jarred, 2003) where it becomes enriched in water, carbon dioxide and incompatible trace elements such as uranium and potassium. As the crust moves away from the ridge it accumulates sediments and becomes colder, older and dense enough to subduct. As the cold slab subducts into the hot mantle, it heats up. The slab goes to greater depths faster than it’s heated therefore pressure increases therefore hydrous minerals start to break down (Aizawa, Tatsumi, Yamada, 1999). The slab undergoes metamorphic reactions from hydrous green schist facies to amphibolite facies and finally to anhydrous eclogite facies at depths of less than 100 km (Ringwood, 1977). ...

    Read More

  • Plate Tectonics Explained

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    Similar fossils of several different animals and plants that once lived on land had been found widely separated on the continents. There would be no way that these could have gotten where they were found if the continents were then as they are now.

    Read More

  • Summary Of My Island Life By Luke Harmon

    544 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his essay, “My Island Life,” Luke Harmon discusses the importance of islands and how they have been used by evolutionary biologists to study evolution and diversification on Earth. Harmon focuses on biogeography and on how different species are distributed across the Earth. Harmon also makes a point to mention how human introduction of invasive species is rapidly causing islands around the Earth to become uniform and less diversified. Harmon’s research on the evolutionary history of lizards found on two separate regions of Islands begins with the influence of Wallace’s line, discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace. This line is described as invisible boundaries that separate Earth into provinces, and these provinces contain distinct species. Wallace noticed that the physical influences and conditions did not change across the line, but the species inhabiting it did. With Wallace’s discoveries in mind, Harmon hypothesizes that by studying the diversification and evolutionary history of two different lizard species, anoles and day geckos, will show how evolution can be predictable.

    Read More

  • Molecular clock and Fossil record

    1978 Words  | 4 Pages

    Scientists have gathered the evidence for evolutionary change, but the evidence appears to light by means of fossils (paleontology) and the rock record (ge...

    Read More

  • The Inuit And The ! Kung: Summary

    535 Words  | 2 Pages

    Isolation is important for splitting of species, because it is very difficult if there is interbreeding. Generally, prediction are used from the geographic speciation to test this theory, however it has been proven true by using the fossil record and DNA sequencing. Next, we have sympatric speciation and it involves the change of species while maintaining the same area. Geographic speciation is more common that sympatric speciation, and can be witnessed in nature more often.

    Read More

  • Explain Two Ways Scientists Learned About Earth's Interior

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    One way Alfred Wegener proved his theory of continental drift was through land features. He realized that the coal fields, mountain ranges, and continents matched, and he attempted to put the continents together (like a puzzle). The second way Wegener proved his theory was through fossils. He found three fossils called Glossopteris (a fern like plant), Mesosaurus, and Lystrosaurus. Glossopteris was found in rocks in Africa, South America, Australia, India, and Antarctica, while Mesosaurus and Lystrosaurus were found on continents separated by oceans. Finally, the third way Wegener proved his theory continental drift was through climate zone. Wegener looked at climates from the past, and had found tropical plants living in Spitsbergen (an island in the arctic). He assumed that a island in the arctic, used to have a warm climate. In conclusion, the three ways Wegener proved his theory continental drift was through land features, fossils, and climate

    Read More

  • Tectonic Boundaries Between Northern America And Pacific Plates

    362 Words  | 1 Pages

    Earthquakes and volcanoes go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly or rice and beans. Where there are volcanos there are usually tectonic plates beneath them either pushing against or pulling away from one another. Take for instance the Cascade Mountain Range in Northern California and stretches through Oregon and into Vancouver, British Columbia and sits northeast of the San Andreas Fault line that runs 750 miles through California. This fault creates the tectonic boundary between the Northern America and Pacific Plates. The three types of plate boundaries are convergent, meaning basically they are colliding together, divergent meaning they are pulling away from one another and transform which means that the plates slide past each other. During the convergence process some plates will subduct beneath the other.

    Read More

  • Biography of Charles Darwin

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    During this time, most geologists stuck to the so-called catastrophes theory that the earth had experienced a succession of creations of animal and plant life, and that each creation had been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe, such as an upheaval of the earth’s surface. It was said that the Noah’s flood had wiped away all life ex-cept those forms taken into the ark. The rest were visible only in the forms of fos-sils. In the view of the catastrophists, species were created individually and immu-table. There was another famous scientist who challenged this theory, he was known as Sir Charles Lyell. He had stated that the surface of the earth was con-stantly undergoing changes.

    Read More

  • Plate Tectonics: Geology Overview

    378 Words  | 1 Pages

    Using the topics provided in the course syllabus, I came up with three categories in total.

    Read More

  • The Scientific Account of Inductivism vs. Falsificationism: Is Science Objective?

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    Chalmers, A. (1976). What is this thing called science? St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

    Read More

  • Volcanoes

    373 Words  | 1 Pages

    created. Hot gases try to escape but are trapped in the magma. The surface of the Earth begins to

    Read More

  • Gender and Nature in Science

    1182 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bowler, Peter J., and Iwan Rhys Morus. Making Modern Science: A Historic Survey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 496-503. Print.

    Read More

  • Importance Of Plate Tectonics

    1029 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since 1596, when Abraham Ortelius suggested that they may ‘drift’, there had been great speculation around the issue. However, following Wegener’s theory, geologists such as Arthur Holmes were able to further develop these ideas, leading to the acceptance of the plate tectonics theory. The evidence that Wegener provided for his theory, was also useful evidence in proving that the plate tectonics theory is valid. Firstly, Wegener noticed that continents such as Africa and South America were able to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. He also observed that animals and fossils in widely separated lands were similar. For example, remains of mesosaurus and cynognathus were found only in South Africa and South America. Therefore, the plates that these two countries lie upon must have moved apart over time; this will have been due to the tectonic movement of the continental

    Read More

  • Earthquakes Hazards And Disaster

    1192 Words  | 3 Pages

    The interior structure of the earth is made up of crust, the mantle and core (inner core and outer core). Earthquakes occur on the crust. Crust forms the external layer of the earth surface. On the crust, the plate tectonics forces are in charge of causing the abrupt earth movements. Due to the existence of an immense temperature and concurrent pressure difference in the outer layer and inner layer of the earth, convection currents occur at the mantle. This energy results from overwhelming decomposition of radioactive substances contained by the rocks found at the interior of the earth. The developed convection currents lead to movement of lava; cold lava finds its way to the interior of the earth crust, while the molten lava which is generally hot, leaves the interior of the earth to the outside of the earth crust. These kinds of circulations occur at different locations of the earth surface and consequently results in segmentation of the earth due to movement in different directions.

    Read More

More about What are Plate Tectonics?

Open Document