Plate Tectonics

• Pertaining to building
(Latin: tectonicus
Greek: tektonikos)
Plate – refers to the large pieces of earth’s lithosphere that are in
constant motion; it may see them referred to as lithospheric plates

Tectonics – Branch of geology dealing with how continents form,

change, and move over time, plus the study of mountain building
episodes

Plate Tectonics – the two sub-layers of the earth’s crust (lithosphere)

that move, float, and sometimes fracture and whose interaction causes
continental drift, earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, and ocean
trenches
MAJOR TECTONIC PLATES:

Minor Tectonic Plates:

1. Arabian plate
2. Carribean plate
3. Cocos plate
4. Juan de Fuca plate
5. Nazca plate
6. Philippine Sea plate
7. Scotia plate
Convection
• flow of heat through gas or liquid
• the motion of warm material that rises, cools off, and sinks again producing continuous
circulation of material and transfer of heat
• convection in the mantle (layer under the crust): hot magma wells up at the ridges forming
new ocean crust and shoving the plates apart. At the subduction zones, two tectonic plates
meet and one slide beneath the other back into the mantle.

Average of plate movement worldwide = approximately between 0.60 cm/yr – 10 cm/yr

 Alfred Lothar Wegener
• German researcher, geophysicist, and
meteorologist
• (1 November 1880 – November 1930)
• Proposed in 1912 the Continental drift theory (
He did not have the force to provide the
movement so it was not accepted until 1950.

Pangaea means
one earth
(study.com)

tillite - sedimentary rock composed of lithified
glacial till
Placer deposits in Ghana is also seen in Brazil
and they fit in a map if placed side by side
• Rocks of the same age and type and displaying the same
formations are found in Souheast Brazil and South Africa
• The Trends of the mountains in the Eastern USA an
Northwest Europe are similar when placed in old positions
• Similar glacial deposits are found in the Antarctica, South
America, and India now thousands of kilometer apart
• Striations (series of ridges, furrows, or linear marks)
showing the same orientation when the continents are
reunited are found in Brazil and West Africa
Thank you!
God bless…