HOW THE THEORY OF PLATE DEVELOPED

In 1912 Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) noticed the same thing and proposed that the continents were once compressed into a single proto continent which he called Pangaea and over time they have drifted apart into their current distribution. He believed that Pangaea was intact until the late carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago, when it began to break up and drift apart. However, Wegener hypothesis lacked a geological mechanism to explain how the continents could drift across the earth’s surface as he proposed. Continental drift was originally proposed by Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, in 1912. According to the theory, surface of the earth is broken into large plates. The size and position of these plates change over time. The edges of these plates, where they move against each other, are sites of intense geologic activity, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building.

HOW PLATE TECTONICS ACCOUNTS FOR THE FEATURES AND PROCESS THAT GEOSCIENTISTS OBSERVE IN THE EARTH

The earth’s features are constantly changing, some of these changes are immediate and some are not immediate. Wind and water erode away mountains and hills. Ice and heat break apart rocks. Rivers cut new valleys and dams form new lakes. Volcanoes and earth form new mountains and hills. Wind and water combine to build sand dunes and then turn around and erode them away. There are many different types of features on earth's surface due to the complexity of our planet. The surface is unique from the other planets because it is the only one which has liquids water in such large quantities. Thus water forms rivers, oceans, beaches and lakes. Mountains, earthquakes and volcanoes, are formed when large pieces of the earth's outer layer move slowly by plate tectonics.