Tectonic Plates

The moving Earth Our Earth is constantly moving! The Earth’s crust is always moving Thanks to tectonic plates

Tectonic plates Tectonic plates: pieces of the lithosphere that move around on top of the mantle. They show the different boundaries of the Earth’s crust They can be made up of both oceanic AND continental crust, or of just purely one of the other. They are like giant jigsaw puzzle pieces They vary, coming in all different shapes and sizes. They all fit neatly into one another though

The 10 Tectonic Plates Pacific plate North American plate Cocos plate Nazca plate South American plate African plate Eurasian plate Indian plate Australian plate Antarctic plate

Structure of the tectonic plate A tectonic plate is like an iceberg…there is much more material below the surface than above it. A tectonic plate can be composed of both continental and oceanic crust, such as the South American and North American plates.

Wegner’s Theory of Continental Drift First proposed by Alfred Wegner Continents can drift apart from one another and have done so in the past.

Wegner’s theory of continental drift Wegner’s theory explains why the continents are shaped the way they are…and their fit into one another Pangea It also explains why fossils of certain animal and plant species are found on two very distant continents, across the Atlantic Ocean Ex: South America and Africa

Pangea All the continents were joined together to form a single, giant land mass, known as Pangea Pangea- “All Earth” (in Greek) Believed to have occurred 245 million years ago.