1. Tectonic Plates

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

3. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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.