ENVS 1060 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Continental Drift, Continental Crust, Plate Tectonics
3 Feb 2018
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Continental drift: dealing with the movement, breakup and joining of continental plates. Plate tectonics: more unifying theory dealing with all aspects of plate movements. Lithosphere: the rigid outer layer of the earth. Consists of the uppermost rocky mantle and overlying crust. Is broken into 7 major plates and many smaller ones: some plates include an entire continent plus a large area of the sea floor constantly in motion and continually changing shape and size. Alfred wegner: first proposed continental drift in 1915. He concluded there was a supercontinent that he called pangaea which began breaking apart 200 million years ago: he suggested that the continents drifted to their present position by plowing through oceanic crust. *the ocean basins were the key to solving the mystery. Ocean floor exploration scientists were able to sample and date rocks on the bottom of the atlantic ocean younger rocks are found closer to the middle of the ocean.
