Plate tectonics (earthquakes and volcanoes) Essay

Plate tectonics (earthquakes and volcanoes) - Essay Example In that case oceans filled the areas between the created new sub-continents. Also, the land mass moves apart continuously as it rides on its plate till it reached a place that resides now. The said continents are still on the move to currently. The occurrence of plate tectonics has not been known exactly what drives despite the existence of theories. From one of the theory, it mentions that the convection that exist within the earth’s mantle pushes the plate in much similar way as air heated by our bodies as it rises upward and gets deflected sideways once it reaches the ceiling. From another theory, it associates gravity with the pulling of the older, colder and the heavier ocean floor forces than that newer and lighter seafloor. Plate tectonics activity occurs at four types of boundaries. They include the divergent boundaries where new crust is created, convergent boundaries have its crust consumed, collision boundaries have its land masses colliding whereas the transform bo undaries has its later sliding against each other (Conrad &Lithgow 13). Plate tectonics occurred from the theory that was first initiated in the early 20th century by a meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. In the year 1912, Wegener identified that the coastlines of both the east coast of South America and west coast of Africa were in a position to fit together like the common jigsaw puzzle. From further examination of the globe, it revealed that all of the earth continents fitted together in a way. At that instance, Wegener suggested that all continents in one time connected in single supercontinents called Pangaea. The researcher believed that the continents gradually drifted apart around 300 million years ago. In 1929 Arthur Holmes, who was a British geologist came up with the theory of thermal convection that explained the movement of the earth’s continent (Conrad &Lithgow