It took nearly a century for scientists to accept the idea that continents were not forever fixed in their places, but had, in fact, slowly drifted to their current locations. In the 1960s plate tectonics, a further refinement of this concept...

The important geologic theory of plate tectonics (tecton - "to build") asserts that the Earth's surface is composed of about seven major blocks, or plates, and many more minor plates that move across the Earth's surface at a very slow rate. Although...

Plate tectonics is the theory explaining geologic changes that result from the movement of lithospheric plates over the asthenosphere (the molten, ductile, upper portion of the earth's mantle). The visible continents, a part of the lithospheric...

Anyone who looks carefully at a map of the Atlantic Ocean is likely to be struck by an interesting point. The eastern coastline of South America bears a striking similarity to the western coastline of Africa. Indeed, it looks almost as if the two...

theory dealing with the dynamics of Earth's outer shell, the lithosphere, that revolutionized earth sciences by providing a uniform context for understanding mountain-building processes, volcanoes, and earthquakes, as well as understanding the...

In terms of plate tectonics, collision boundaries are sites where lithospheric plates move together and the resulting compression causes either subduction (where one or both lithospheric plates are driven down and destroyed in the molten mantle) or...

Theory that the Earth's lithosphere (the crust and upper portion of the mantle) is divided into about 12 large plates and several small ones that float on and travel independently over the asthenosphere. The theory revolutionized the geological...

Scientific study of the deformation of the rocks that make up the Earth's crust and the forces that produce such deformation. It deals with the folding and faulting associated with mountain building; the large-scale, gradual, upward and downward...

Plate tectonics (from Greek τέκτων, tektÅn "builder" or "mason") is a theory of geology that has been developed to explain the observed evidence for large scale motions of the Earth's lithosphere. The theory encompassed and superseded the older...