Science Chapter 3 Notes
Terms
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- Pangea
- a single giant landmass that exsisted over 200 million years ago and over time spilt apart to the continents today
- Glossopteris
- an extinct or no longer living plant that was evidence for continental drift
- divergent boundaries
- a plate boundary where plates move apart
- ocean-floor spreading
- when hardend lava forms new ocean floor
- lithosphere
- the topmost outer layer of the eath made up of the crust and part of the mantle
- Theory of continental drift
- proposed by Alfred Wegner, that the continents were once joined together and have since drifted apart
- plate
- the moving irregularly-sahped slabs that fit together like paving stones to form the surface layer of the earth
- strike-slip boundaries
- when two plates grind together and slip past each other horizontally
- subduction
- the process in which crust plunges back into the earth
- convergent boundaries
- a plate boundry where plates come together
- fossils
- the perserved trace, imprint, or remains of a plant or animal
- trasform faults
- a fault that runs across the mid ocean ridge
- trench
- V-shaped valleys that lie along the bottom of the oceans
- theory of plate tectonics
- Earth's lithosphere is made up of huge plates that move over Earth's surface
- tectonics
- the branch of geology that deals with movements of the earth crust
- Midocean ridges
- a large system of underwater mountains that have a deep crack, called a rift vally running through their center