he lithosphere—Earth's strong,

| rigid outer shell of rock—is

broken into about a dozen
plates, which slide by, converge with,
or separate from each other as they
move over the weaker, ductile astheno-
sphere. Plates are created where they
separate and recycled where they con-
verge, in a continuous process of cre-
ation and destruction. Continents, em-
bedded in the lithosphere, drift along
with the moving plates. The theory of
plate tectonics describes the move-
ment of plates and the forces acting
between them. It also explains volca-
noes; earthquakes; and the distribution of mountain chains, rock
assemblages, and structures on the seafloor—all of which result
from movements at plate boundaries. Plate tectonics provides a
conceptual framework for a large part of this book and, indeed, for
much of geology. This chapter lays out the plate tectonics the-
ory and examines how the forces that drive plate motions
arise from the mantle convection system.

In the 1960s, a great revolution in thinking shook the world of

geology. For almost 200 years, geologists had developed various
theories of tectonics (from the Greek tekton, meaning "builder")—
the general term used to describe mountain building, volcanism,
and other processes that construct geologic features on Earth's sur-
face. It was not until the discovery of plate tectonics, however, that
a single theory could satisfactorily explain the whole range of geo-
logic processes. Physics had a comparable revolution at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, when the theory of relativity unified
the physical laws that govern space, time, mass, and motion. Biol-
ogy had a comparable revolution in the middle of the twentieth
century, when the discovery of DNA allowed biologists to explain
how organisms transmit the information that controls their growth,
development, and functioning from generation to generation.
 The basic ideas of plate tectonics were put together as a
unified theory of geology about 40 years ago. The scientific
synthesis that led to plate tectonics, however, really began
much earlier in the twentieth century, with the recognition of
evidence for continental drift.

Such changes in the superficial parts of the globe seemed to

me unlikely to happen if the earth were solid to the center. I
therefore imagined that the internal parts might be a fluid
more dense, and of greater specific gravity than any of the
solids we are acquainted with, which therefore might swim in
or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of the earth would be a
shell, capable of being broken and disordered by the violent
movements of the fluid on which it rested.
(Benjamin Franklin, 1782, in a letter to French geologist
Abbd J. L. Giraud-Soulavie)

The concept of continental drift—large-scale movements

of continents over the globe—has been around for a long
time. In the late sixteenth century and in the seventeenth
century, European scientists noticed the jigsaw-puzzle fit of
the coasts on both sides of the Atlantic, as if the Americas,
Europe, and Africa had been part of a single continent and
had subsequently drifted apart. By the close of the nine-
teenth century, the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess had put
together some of the pieces of the puzzle. He postulated that
the present-day southern continents had once formed a sin-
gle giant continent called Gondwanaland (or Gondwana). In
1915, Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist who was
recovering from wounds suffered in World War I, wrote a
book on the breakup and drift of continents. In it, he laid out
the remarkable similarity of rocks, geologic structures, and
fossils on opposite sides of the Atlantic (Figure 2.1). In the
years that followed, Wegener postulated a supercontinent,
which he called Pangaea (Greek for "all lands"), that broke
up into the continents as we know them today.
Although Wegener was correct in asserting that the con-
tinents had drifted apart, his hypotheses about how fast they ent continents showed similarities in evolution until the pos-
were moving and what forces were pushing them across tulated breakup time. After that, they followed different evo-
Earth's surface turned out to be wrong, which reduced his lutionary paths, presumably because of the isolation and
credibility among other scientists. After about a decade of changing environments of the separating continents. In addi-
spirited debate, physicists convinced geologists that Earth's tion, rocks deposited by glaciers that existed 300 million
outer layers were too rigid for continental drift to occur, and years ago are now distributed across South America, Africa,
Wegener's ideas fell into disrepute among all except a few India, and Australia. If the southern continents had once been
geologists. part of Gondwanaland near the South Pole, a single continen-
The advocates of the drift hypothesis pointed not only to tal glacier could account for these glacial deposits.
geographic matching but also to similarities in rock ages and
trends in geologic structures on opposite sides of the Atlantic
(see Figure 2.1). They also offered arguments, accepted now
as good evidence of drift, based on fossil and climate data. The geologic evidence did not convince the skeptics, who
Identical 300-million-year-old fossils of the reptile Meso- maintained that continental drift was physically impossible.
saurus, for example, are found only in Africa and South No one had yet come up with a plausible driving force that
America, suggesting that the two continents were joined could have split Pangaea and moved the continents apart.
at that time (Figure 2.2). The animals and plants on differ- Wegener, for example, thought the continents floated like
boats across the solid oceanic crust, dragged along by the
tidal forces of the Sun and Moon. His hypothesis was
quickly rejected, however, because it could be shown that
tidal forces are much too weak to move continents.
The breakthrough came when scientists realized that
convection in Earth's mantle (discussed in Chapter 1) could
push and pull the continents apart, creating new oceanic
crust through the process of seafloor spreading. In 1928,
the British geologist Arthur Holmes proposed that convec-
tion currents "dragged the two halves of the original conti-
nent apart, with consequent mountain building in the front
where the currents are descending, and the ocean floor
development on the site of the gap, where the currents are
ascending." Given the physicists' arguments that Earth's
crust and mantle are rigid and immobile, Holmes conceded
that "purely speculative ideas of this kind, specially invented
to match the requirements, can have no scientific value until
they acquire support from independent evidence."
Convincing evidence emerged from extensive explo-
ration of the seafloor after World War II. The mapping of the
undersea Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the discovery of the deep,
cracklike valley, or rift, running down its center sparked
much speculation (Figure 2.3). Geologists found that almost
all earthquakes in the Atlantic Ocean occur near this rift val- collectively as the Ring of Fire (Figure 2.4). The details of
ley. Because tectonic faulting generates most earthquakes, this process, however, remained unclear.
these results indicated that the rift was a tectonically active In 1965, the Canadian geologist J. Tuzo Wilson first
feature. Other mid-ocean ridges with similar rifts and earth- described tectonics around the globe in terms of rigid plates
quake activity were found in the Pacific and Indian oceans. moving over Earth's surface. He characterized the three
In the early 1960s, Harry Hess of Princeton University basic types of boundaries where plates move apart, come
and Robert Dietz of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography together, or slide past each other. Soon after, other scientists
proposed that the crust separates along the rifts in mid-ocean showed that almost all current tectonic deformations—the
ridges and that new seafloor forms by upwelling of hot new processes by which rocks are folded, faulted, sheared, or
crust into these cracks. The new seafloor—actually the top compressed by Earth stresses—are concentrated at these
of newly created lithosphere—spreads laterally away from boundaries. They measured the rates and directions of the
the rift and is replaced by even newer crust in a continuing tectonic motions and demonstrated that these motions are
process of plate creation. mathematically consistent with a system of rigid plates mov-
ing over the planet's spherical surface. The basic elements
of the plate tectonics theory were established by the end
of 1968. By 1970, the evidence for plate tectonics had be-
The seafloor spreading hypothesis put forward by Hess and come so persuasive that almost all Earth scientists em-
Dietz in 1962 explained how the continents could drift apart braced the theory. Textbooks were revised, and specialists
through the creation of new lithosphere at mid-ocean rifts. began to consider the implications of the new concept for
Could the seafloor and its underlying lithosphere be their own fields.
destroyed by recycling back into Earth's interior? If not,
Earth's surface area would have to increase over time. For a
period in the early 1960s, some physicists and geologists
actually believed in this idea of an expanding Earth. Other
geologists recognized that the seafloor was indeed being According to the theory of plate tectonics, the rigid litho-
recycled in regions of intense volcanic and earthquake activ- sphere is not a continuous shell but is broken into a mosaic
ity around the margins of the Pacific Ocean basin, known of about a dozen large, rigid plates that move over Earth's
surface. Each plate moves as a distinct unit, riding on the cated and distributed over a wider area. This difference is
asthenosphere, which is also in motion. The largest is the illustrated in Figure 2.6.
Pacific Plate, which comprises much (though not all) of
the Pacific Ocean basin. Some of the plates are named after O c e a n i c P l a t e S e p a r a t i o n On the seafloor, the bound-
the continents they include, but in no case is a plate identi- ary between separating plates is marked by a mid-ocean
cal with a continent. The North American Plate, for instance, ridge that exhibits active volcanism, earthquakes, and rift-
extends from the Pacific coast of North America to the mid- ing caused by tensional (stretching) forces that are pulling
dle of the Atlantic Ocean, where it meets the Eurasian and the two plates apart. Figure 2.6a shows what happens in one
African plates. The major plates and their present-day mo- example, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Here seafloor spreading
tions are represented in Figure 2.5. is at work as the North American and Eurasian plates sepa-
In addition to the major plates, there are a number of rate and new Atlantic seafloor is created by mantle up-
smaller ones. An example is the tiny Juan de Fuca Plate, a welling. (A more detailed portrait of the Mid-Atlantic
piece of oceanic lithosphere trapped between the giant Ridge is shown in Figure 2.3.) The island of Iceland ex-
Pacific and North American plates just offshore of the poses a segment of the otherwise submerged Mid-Atlantic
northwestern United States. Others are continental frag- Ridge, allowing geologists to view the process of plate sep-
ments, such as the small Anatolian Plate, which includes aration and seafloor spreading directly (Figure 2.7, page
much of Turkey. (Not all of the smaller plates are shown in 28). The Mid-Atlantic Ridge continues in the Arctic Ocean
Figure 2.5.) north of Iceland and connects to a nearly globe-encircling
To see geology in action, go to a plate boundary. De- system of mid-ocean ridges that winds through the Indian
pending on which boundary you visit, you will find earth- and Pacific oceans, ending along the western coast of North
quakes; volcanoes; mountains; long, narrow rifts; folding; America. These spreading centers have created the mil-
and faulting. Many geologic features develop through the lions of square kilometers of oceanic crust that now floor
interactions of plates at their boundaries. The three basic the world's oceans.
types of plate boundaries are depicted in Figure 2.6 (pages
26-27) and discussed in the following pages. C o n t i n e n t a l P l a t e S e p a r a t i o n Early stages of plate
• At divergent boundaries, plates move apart and new litho- separation, such as the Great Rift Valley of East Africa (see
sphere is created (plate area increases). Figure 2.6b), can be found on some continents. These diver-
gent boundaries are characterized by rift valleys, volcanic
• At convergent boundaries, plates come together and one activity, and earthquakes distributed over a wider zone than
is recycled back into the mantle (plate area decreases). is found at oceanic spreading centers. The Red Sea and
• At transform-fault boundaries, plates slide horizontally the Gulf of California are rifts that are further along in the
past each other (plate area remains constant). spreading process (Figure 2.8, page 29). In these cases,
the continents have separated enough for new seafloor to
Like many models of nature, the three types of plates form along the spreading axis, and the ocean has flooded
shown in Figure 2.6 are idealized. Besides these basic types, the rift valleys. Sometimes continental rifting slows or stops
there are "oblique" boundaries that combine divergence or before the continent splits apart and a new ocean basin
convergence with some amount of transform faulting. More- opens. The Rhine Valley along the border of Germany and
over, what actually goes on at a plate boundary depends on France is a weakly active continental rift that may be this
the type of lithosphere involved, because continental and type of "failed" spreading center. Will the East African Rift
oceanic lithosphere behave differently. The continental crust continue to open, causing the Somali Subplate to split away
is made of rocks that are both lighter and weaker than either from Africa completely and form a new ocean basin, as
the oceanic crust or the mantle beneath the crust. Later chap- happened between Africa and the island of Madagascar? Or
ters will examine these differences in more detail, so for will the spreading slow and eventually stop, as appears to
now you need to keep in mind only two consequences: be happening in western Europe? Geologists don't know
(1) because it is lighter, continental crust is not as easily recy- the answers.
cled as oceanic crust, and (2) because continental crust is
weaker, plate boundaries that involve continental crust tend
to be more spread out and more complicated than oceanic
plate boundaries.
Plates cover the globe, so if they separate in one place, they
must converge somewhere else, to conserve Earth's sur- *
face area. (As far as we can tell, our planet is not expand-
ing!) Where plates collide, they form convergent bound-
Divergent boundaries within the ocean basins are narrow
aries. The profusion of geologic events resulting from plate
rifts that approximate the idealization of plate tectonics.
collisions makes convergent boundaries the most complex
Divergence within the continents is usually more compli-
type observed.
O c e a n - O c e a n C o n v e r g e n c e If the two plates involved
are oceanic, one descends beneath the other in a process
known as subduction (see Figure 2.6c). The oceanic litho-
sphere of the subducting plate sinks into the asthenosphere
and is eventually recycled by the mantle convection system.
This sinking produces a long, narrow deep-sea trench. In the
Marianas Trench of the western Pacific, the ocean reaches
its greatest depth, about 11 km—deeper than the height of
Mount Everest. As the cold lithospheric slab descends, the
pressure increases. Water trapped in the rocks is squeezed
out and rises into the asthenosphere above the slab. This
fluid melts the mantle, producing a chain of volcanoes,
called an island arc, on the seafloor behind the trench. The
subduction of the Pacific Plate has formed the volcanically
active Aleutian Islands west of Alaska as well as the abun-
dant island arcs of the western Pacific. The cold slabs of
lithosphere descending into the mantle cause earthquakes as
deep as 690 km beneath these island arcs.

O c e a n - C o n t i n e n t C o n v e r g e n c e If one plate has a con-

tinental edge, it overrides the oceanic plate, because conti-
nental crust is lighter and much less easily subducted than
oceanic crust (see Figure 2.6d). The continental margin
crumples and is uplifted into a mountain chain roughly par-
allel to the deep-sea trench. The enormous forces of colli-
sion and subduction produce great earthquakes along the
subduction interface. Over time, materials are scraped off
the descending slab and incorporated into the adjacent
mountains, leaving geologists with a complex (and often
confusing) record of the subduction process. As in the case
of ocean-ocean convergence, the water carried down by the
subducting oceanic plate melts the mantle wedge and forms
volcanoes in the mountain belts behind the trench.
The western coast of South America, where the South
American Plate collides with the oceanic Nazca Plate, is a
subduction zone of this type. A great chain of high moun-
tains, the Andes, rises on the continental side of the collision
boundary, and a deep-sea trench lies just off the coast. The
volcanoes here are active and deadly. One of them, Nevado C o n t i n e n t - C o n t i n e n t C o n v e r g e n c e Where plate
del Ruiz in Colombia, killed 25,000 people when it erupted convergence involves two continents (see Figure 2.6e),
in 1985. Some of the world's greatest earthquakes have been oceanic-type subduction cannot occur. The geologic con-
recorded along this boundary. Another example occurs sequences of such a collision are impressive. The collision
where the small Juan de Fuca Plate subducts beneath the of the Indian and Eurasian plates, both with continents at
North American Plate off the coast of western North Amer- their leading edges, provides the best example. The Eura-
ica. This convergent boundary gives rise to the dangerous sian Plate overrides the Indian Plate, but India and Asia
volcanoes of the Cascade Range, such as Mount St. Helens, remain afloat. The collision creates a double thickness of
which had a major eruption in 1980 and a minor one in crust forming the highest mountain range in the world,
2004. As our understanding of the Cascadia subduction zone the Himalaya, as well as the vast high plateau of Tibet.
grows, scientists are increasingly worried that a great earth- Severe earthquakes occur in the crumpling crust of this and
quake could occur there and cause devastating damage other continent-continent collision zones. Geologists have
along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Colum- been able to show that many episodes of mountain build-
bia. Such an earthquake could possibly cause a large tsunami ing throughout Earth's history were caused by continent-
like the disastrous one generated by the great Sumatra earth- continent collisions. An example is the Appalachian Moun-
quake of December 26, 2004, which occurred in a subduc- tains that run along the eastern coast of North America.
tion zone in the Indian Ocean. This chain was uplifted when North America, Eurasia, and
Africa collided to form the supercontinent of Pangaea Andreas fault or related faults near Los Angeles and San
about 300 million years ago. Francisco, resulting in an extremely destructive earthquake.
Transform faults can connect divergent plate boundaries
I Transform-Fault Boundaries with convergent boundaries and convergent boundaries with
other convergent boundaries. Can you find examples of these
At boundaries where plates slide past each other, lithosphere types of transform-fault boundaries in Figure 2.5?
is neither created nor destroyed. Such boundaries are trans-
form faults: fractures along which relative displacement
occurs as horizontal slip between the adjacent blocks (see Fig-
ure 2.6f, g). Transform-fault boundaries are typically found Each plate is bordered by some combination of divergent,
along mid-ocean ridges where the continuity of a divergent convergent, and transform-fault boundaries. As we can see
boundary is broken and the boundary is offset in a steplike in Figure 2.5, the Nazca Plate in the Pacific is bounded on
pattern. three sides by divergence zones, where new lithosphere is
The San Andreas fault in California, where the Pacific generated along mid-ocean ridge segments offset in a step-
Plate slides by the North American Plate, is a prime example wise pattern by transform faults. It is bounded on one side
of a transform fault on land, as shown in Figure 2.9. Because by the Peru-Chile subduction zone, where lithosphere is
the plates have been sliding past each other for millions of consumed at a deep-sea trench. The North American Plate is
years, rocks facing each other on the two sides of the fault are bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a diver-
of different types and ages. Large earthquakes, such as the one gence zone; on the west by the San Andreas fault and other
that destroyed San Francisco in 1906, can occur on transform- transform-fault boundaries; and on the northwest by subduc-
fault boundaries. There is much concern that within the next tion zones and transform-fault boundaries that run from
several decades, a sudden slip could occur along the San Oregon to the Aleutians.
 T h e Rock Record of Magnetic Reversals on Land
Magnetic anomalies are evidence that Earth's magnetic field
does not remain constant over time. At present, the north
magnetic pole is closely aligned with the geographic north
How fast do plates move? Do some plates move faster than pole (see Figure 1.12), but small changes in the geodynamo
others, and if so, why? Is the velocity of plate movements can flip the orientation of the north and south magnetic poles
today the same as it was in the geologic past? Geologists by 180°, causing a magnetic reversal.
have developed ingenious methods to answer these ques- In the early 1960s, geologists discovered that a precise
tions and thereby gain a better understanding of plate tecton- record of this peculiar behavior can be obtained from layered
ics. In this section, we will examine three of these methods. flows of volcanic lava. When iron-rich lavas cool, they
become slightly magnetized in the direction of Earth's mag-
netic field. This phenomenon is called thermoremanent mag-
netization, because the rock "remembers" the magnetization
long after the magnetizing field existing at the time it formed
In World War II, extremely sensitive instruments were has changed.
developed to detect submarines by the magnetic fields In layered lava flows, each layer of rock from the top
emanating from their steel hulls. Geologists modified these down represents a progressively earlier period of geologic
instruments slightly and towed them behind research ships time: layers deeper in the stack are older. The age of each
to measure the local magnetic field created by magnetized layer can then be determined by various dating methods
rocks beneath the sea. Steaming back and forth across the (described in Chapter 8). Measuring the thermoremanent
ocean, seagoing scientists discovered regular patterns in magnetization of rock samples from each layer reveals the
the strength of the local magnetic field that completely sur- direction of Earth's magnetic field when that layer cooled. By
prised them. In many areas, the magnetic field alternated repeating these measurements at hundreds of places around
between high and low values in long, narrow parallel the world, geologists have worked out the detailed history of
bands, called magnetic anomalies, that were almost per- reversals going back into geologic time. The magnetic time
fectly symmetrical with respect to the crest of the mid- scale of the past 5 million years is given in Figure 2.10.
ocean ridge. An example is shown in Figure 2.10. The About half of all rocks studied are found to be magnet-
detection of these patterns was one of the great discoveries ized in a direction opposite that of Earth's present magnetic
that confirmed seafloor spreading and led to the plate tec- field. Apparently, the field has flipped frequently over geo-
tonics theory. It also allowed geologists to measure plate logic time, and normal fields (same as now) and reversed
motions far back into geologic time. To understand these fields (opposite to now) are equally likely. Major periods
advances, we need to look more closely at how rocks when the field is normal or reversed are called magnetic
become magnetized. citrons; they seem to last about half a million years,
 although the pattern of reversals becomes highly irregular as the North American and Eurasian plates apart by about
we move back in geologic time. Within the major chrons are 60 km in 3.3 million years, giving a spreading rate of 18 km
short-lived reversals of the field, known as magnetic sub- per million years or, equivalently, 18 mm/year.
chrons, which may last anywhere from several thousand to On a divergent plate boundary, the combination of the
200,000 years. spreading rate and the spreading direction gives the relative
plate velocity: the velocity at which one plate moves rela-
- Magnetic A n o m a l y P a t t e r n s on t h e Seafloor The pe- tive to the other.
culiar banded magnetic patterns found on the seafloor (see If you look at Figure 2.5, you will see that the spreading
Figure 2.10) puzzled scientists until 1963, when two English- rate at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge south of Iceland is fairly low
men, F. J. Vine and D. H. Mathews—and, independently, two compared to the rate at many other places on the mid-ocean
Canadians, L. Morley and A. Larochelle—made a startling ridges. The speed record for spreading can be found on the
proposal. Based on the new evidence for magnetic reversals East Pacific Rise just south of the equator, where the Pacific
that land geologists had collected from lava flows, they rea- and Nazca plates are separating at a rate of about 150 mm/
soned that the high and low magnetic bands on the seafloor year—an order of magnitude faster than the rate in the North
corresponded to bands of rock that were magnetized during Atlantic. A rough average for mid-ocean ridges around the
ancient episodes of normal and reversed magnetism. That is, world is 50 mm/year. This is approximately the rate at which
when a research ship was above rocks magnetized in the nor- your fingernails grow—so, geologically speaking, the plates
mal direction, it would record a locally stronger field, or a move very fast indeed. These spreading rates provide impor-
positive magnetic anomaly. When it was above rocks mag- tant data for the study of the mantle convection system, a
netized in the reversed direction, it would record a locally topic we will return to later in this chapter.
weaker field, or a negative magnetic anomaly. We can follow the magnetic time scale through many
This idea provided a powerful test of the seafloor reversals of Earth's magnetic field. The corresponding mag-
spreading hypothesis, which states that new seafloor is netic bands on the seafloor, which can be thought of as age
created along the rift at the crest of a mid-ocean ridge as bands, have been mapped in detail from the ridge crests
the plates move apart (see Figure 2.10). Magma flowing across the ocean basins over a time span of almost 200 mil-
up from the interior solidifies in the crack and becomes lion years.
magnetized in the direction of Earth's field at the time. As The power and convenience of using seafloor magneti-
the seafloor splits and moves away from the ridge, approx- zation to work out the history of ocean basins cannot be
imately half of the newly magnetized material moves to overemphasized. Simply by steaming back and forth over
one side and half to the other, forming two symmetrical the ocean, measuring the magnetic fields of the seafloor
magnetized bands. Newer material fills the crack, con- rocks and correlating the pattern of reversals with the time
tinuing the process. In this way, the seafloor acts like a sequence worked out by the methods just described, geolo-
tape recorder that encodes the history of the opening of gists determined the ages of various regions of the seafloor
the oceans by imprinting the reversals of Earth's mag- without even examining rock samples. In effect, they
netic field. learned how to "replay the tape."
Within a few years, marine scientists were able to show Although seafloor magnetization is a very effective tool,
that this model provides a consistent explanation for the it is an indirect, or remote, sensing method in that rocks are
symmetrical patterns of seafloor magnetic anomalies found not recovered from the seafloor and their ages are not directly
on mid-ocean ridges around the world. Moreover, it gave determined in the laboratory. Direct evidence of seafloor
them a precise tool for measuring the rates of seafloor spreading and plate movement was still needed to convince
spreading now and in the geologic past. This evidence con- the few remaining skeptics. Deep-sea drilling supplied it.
tributed substantially to the discovery and confirmation of
plate tectonics.

Inferring Seafloor A g e s and Relative P l a t e Velocity In 1968, a program of drilling into the seafloor was launched
By using the ages of reversals that had been worked out from as a joint project of major oceanographic institutions and the
magnetized lavas on land, geologists could assign ages to the National Science Foundation. Later, many nations joined the
bands of magnetized rocks on the seafloor. They could then effort. This global experiment aimed to drill through, re-
calculate how fast the seafloor opened by using the formula trieve, and study seafloor rocks from many places in the
speed = distance/time, where distance is measured from world's oceans. Using hollow drills, scientists brought up
the ridge axis and time equals seafloor age. For instance, the cores containing sections of seafloor rocks. In some cases,
magnetic anomaly pattern in Figure 2.10 shows that the the drilling penetrated thousands of meters below the sea-
boundary between the Gauss normal polarity chron and floor surface. Geologists now had an opportunity to work out
the Gilbert reverse polarity chron, which was dated from lava the history of the ocean basins from direct evidence.
flows at 3.3 million years, is located about 30 km away from One of the most important facts geologists sought was
the Reykjanes Ridge crest. Here, seafloor spreading moved the age of each sample. Small particles falling through the
ocean water—dust from the atmosphere, organic material enough to measure the motion. In Wegener's day, the accu-
from marine plants and animals—begin to accumulate as racy of astronomical positioning was poor; uncertainties in
seafloor sediments as soon as new oceanic crust forms. fixing intercontinental distances exceeded 100 m. Therefore,
Therefore, the age of the oldest sediments in the core, those even at the high rates of motion he was proposing, it would
immediately on top of the crust, tells the geologist how old take a number of years to observe drift. He claimed that two
the ocean floor is at that spot. The age of sediments is astronomical surveys of the distance between Europe and
obtained primarily from the fossil skeletons of tiny, single- Greenland (where he worked as a meteorologist), taken
celled animals that live in the ocean and sink to the bottom 6 years apart, supported his high rate, but he was wrong
when they die (see Chapter 8). Geologists found that the again. We now know that the spreading of the Mid-Atlantic
sediments in the cores become older with increasing dis- Ridge from one survey to the next was only about a tenth of
tance from mid-ocean ridges and that the age of the seafloor a meter—a thousand times too small to be observed by the
at any one place agrees almost perfectly with the age deter- techniques that were then available.
mined from magnetic reversal data. This agreement vali- Owing to the high accuracy required to observe plate
dated magnetic dating of the seafloor and clinched the con- motions directly, geodetic techniques did not play a signifi-
cept of seafloor spreading. cant role in the discovery of plate tectonics. Geologists had
to rely on the evidence for seafloor spreading from the geo-
logic record—the magnetic stripes and ages from fossils
described earlier. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, an
astronomical positioning method was developed that used
In his publications advocating continental drift, Alfred signals from distant "quasi-stellar radio sources" (quasars)
Wegener made a big mistake: he proposed that North recorded by huge dish antennas. This method can measure
America and Europe were drifting apart at a rate of nearly intercontinental distances to an amazing accuracy of 1 mm.
30 meters per year—a thousand times faster than the In 1986, a team of scientists using this method showed that
Atlantic seafloor is actually spreading! This unbelievably the distance between antennas in Europe (Sweden) and
high speed was one of the reasons that many scientists North America (Massachusetts) had increased 19 mm/year
roundly rejected his notions of continental drift. Wegener over a period of 5 years, very close to the rate predicted by
made his estimate by incorrectly assuming that the conti- geologic models of plate tectonics. Wegener's dream of
nents were joined together as Pangaea as recently as the last directly measuring continental drift by astronomical posi-
ice age (which occurred only about 20,000 years ago). His tioning was realized at last.
belief in a rapid rate also involved some wishful thinking: he Postscript: Today, the Great Pyramid of Egypt is not
hoped that the drift hypothesis could be confirmed by aimed directly north, as stated previously, but slightly east
repeated accurate measurements of the distance across the of north. Did the ancient Egyptian astronomers make a
Atlantic Ocean using astronomical positioning. mistake in orienting the pyramid 40 centuries ago? Archae-
ologists think probably not. Over this period, Africa drifted
A s t r o n o m i c a l Positioning Astronomical positioning— enough to rotate the pyramid out of alignment with true
measuring the positions of points on Earth's surface in rela- north.
tion to the fixed stars in the night sky—is a technique of
geodesy, the ancient science of measuring the shape of the Global Positioning S y s t e m Doing geodesy with big radio
Earth and locating points on its surface. Surveyors have telescopes is expensive and is not a practical tool for investi-
used astronomical positioning for centuries to determine gating plate tectonic motions in remote areas of the world.
geographic boundaries on land, and sailors have used it to Since the mid-1980s, geologists have used a constellation of
locate their ships at sea. Four thousand years ago, Egyptian 24 Earth-orbiting satellites, called the Global Positioning Sys-
builders used astronomical positioning to aim the Great tem (GPS), to make the same types of measurements with the
Pyramid due north. same astounding accuracy using inexpensive, portable radio
Wegener imagined that geodesy could be used to meas- receivers not much bigger than this book (Figure 2.11). GPS
ure continental drift in the following way. Two observers, one receivers record high-frequency radio waves keyed to precise
in Europe and the other in North America, would simultane- atomic clocks aboard the satellites. The satellite constellation
ously determine their positions relative to the fixed stars. serves as an outside frame of reference, just as the fixed stars
From these positions, they would calculate the distance be- and quasars do in astronomical positioning.
tween their two observing posts at that instant. They would The changes in distance between land-based GPS re-
then repeat this distance measurement from the same observ- ceivers placed on different plates, recorded over several
ing posts sometime later—say, after 1 year. If the continents years, agree in both magnitude and direction with those
are drifting apart, then the distance should have increased, found from magnetic anomalies on the seafloor. These ex-
and the value of the increase would determine the speed of periments indicate that plate motions are remarkably steady
the drift. over periods of time ranging from a few years to millions of
For this technique to work, however, one must deter- years. Geologists are now using GPS to measure plate
mine the relative positions of the observing posts accurately motions on a yearly bpsis at many locations around the globe.
 that led to the assembly of Pangaea and to its later fragmen-
tation into the continents we know today. Let's use what we
have learned about plate tectonics to see how this feat was
accomplished.

The color map in Figure 2.12 shows the ages of the world's
ocean floors as determined by magnetic reversal data and
fossils from deep-sea drilling. Each colored band represents
a span of time corresponding to the age of the crust within
that band. The boundaries between bands, called isochrons,
are contours that connect rocks of equal age. Isochrons tell us
the time that has elapsed since the crustal rocks were injected
as magma into a mid-ocean rift and, therefore, the amount of
spreading that has occurred since they formed. Notice how
the seafloor becomes progressively older on both sides of the
mid-ocean rifts. For example, the distance from a ridge axis
to a 140-million-year isochron (boundary between green and
blue bands) indicates the extent of new ocean floor created
over that time span. The more widely spaced isochrons (the
wider colored bands) of the eastern Pacific signify faster
spreading rates than those in the Atlantic.
In 1990, after a 20-year search, geologists found the old-
est oceanic rocks by drilling into the seafloor of the western
Pacific. These rocks turned out to be about 200 million years
old, only about 4 percent of Earth's age. This date indicates
how geologically young the seafloor is compared with the
continents. Over a period of 100 million to 200 million years
in some places and only tens of millions of years in others,
the ocean lithosphere forms, spreads, cools, and subducts
back into the underlying mantle. In contrast, the oldest con-
tinental rocks are about 4 billion years old.

Earth's plates behave as rigid bodies. That is, the distances

between three points on the same rigid plate—say, New
York, Miami, and Bermuda on the North American Plate—
do not change very much, no matter how far the plate
moves. But the distance between, say, New York and Lisbon
Postscript: GPS receivers are now used in automobiles,
increases because the two cities are on different plates that
as part of a navigating system that will lead the driver to a
are separating along a narrow zone of spreading on the Mid-
specific street address. It is interesting that the scientists
Atlantic Ridge. The direction of the movement of one plate
who developed the atomic clocks used in GPS did so for
in relation to another depends on geometric principles that
research in fundamental physics and had no idea they would
govern the behavior of rigid plates on a sphere. Two primary
be creating a multibillion-dollar industry. Along with the
principles are
transistor, laser, and many other technologies, GPS demon-
strates the serendipitous manner in which basic research 1. Transform-fault boundaries indicate the directions of
repays the society that supports it. relative plate movement. With few exceptions, no overlap,
buckling, or separation occurs along typical transform-
fault boundaries in the oceans. The two plates merely slide
past each other without creating or destroying plate mate-
rial. Look for a transform-fault boundary if you want to
The supercontinent of Pangaea was the only major land- deduce the direction of relative plate motion, because the
mass that existed 250 million years ago. One of the great orientation of the fault is the direction in which one plate
triumphs of modern geology is the reconstruction of events slides with respect to the other, as Figure 2.6 shows.
2. Seafloor isochrons reveal the positions of divergent separated South America, Africa, India, and Antarctica, cre-
boundaries in earlier times. Isochrons on the seafloor are ating the South Atlantic and Southern oceans and narrowing
roughly parallel and symmetrical with the ridge axis along the Tethys Ocean (Figure 2.13d). The separation of Australia
which they were created (see Figure 2.12). Because each from Antarctica and the ramming of India into Eurasia
isochron was at the boundary of plate separation at an earlier closed the Tethys Ocean, giving us the world we see today
time, isochrons that are of the same age but on opposite sides (Figure 2.13e).
of an ocean ridge can be brought together to show the posi- The plate motions have not ceased, of course, so the
tions of the plates and the configuration of the continents configuration of the continents will continue to evolve. A
embedded in them as they were in that earlier time. plausible scenario for the distribution of continents and plate
boundaries 50 million years in the future is displayed in Fig-
ure 2.13f.

Using these principles, geologists have reconstructed the

opening of the Atlantic Ocean and the breakup of Pangaea.
Figure 2.13a shows the supercontinent of Pangaea as it
existed 240 million years ago. It began to break apart when The isochron map in Figure 2.12 tells us that all of the
North America rifted away from Europe about 200 million seafloor on Earth's surface today has been created since the
years ago (Figure 2.13b). The opening of the North Atlantic breakup of Pangaea. We know from the geologic record in
was accompanied by the separation of the northern conti- older continental mountain belts, however, that plate tecton-
nents (Laurasia) from the southern continents (Gondwana) ics was operating for billions of years before this breakup.
and the rifting of Gondwana along what is now the eastern Evidently, seafloor spreading took place as it does today, and
coast of Africa (Figure 2.13c). The breakup of Gondwana there were previous episodes of continental drift and colli-
sion. Subduction back into the mantle has destroyed the sea- climate system better—a matter of great urgency because of
floor created in these earlier times, so we must rely on the the possibility of greenhouse warming triggered by human
older evidence preserved on continents to identify and chart activity. What better testimony to the triumph of this once
the movements of ancient continents (paleocontinents). outrageous hypothesis than its ability to revitalize and shed
Old mountain belts such as the Appalachians of North light on so many diverse topics?
America and the Urals, which separate Europe from Asia,
help us locate ancient collisions of the paleocontinents. In
many places, the rocks reveal ancient episodes of rifting and MANTLE CONVECTION:
subduction. Rock types and fossils also indicate the distribu- The Engine of Plate Tectonics
tion of ancient seas, glaciers, lowlands, mountains, and cli-
mates. Knowledge of ancient climates enables geologists to Everything discussed so far might be called descriptive plate
locate the latitudes at which the continental rocks formed, tectonics. But a description is hardly an explanation. We
which in turn helps them to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of need a more comprehensive theory that explains why plates
paleocontinents. When volcanism or mountain building pro- move. Finding such a theory remains one of the major chal-
duces new continental rocks, these rocks also record the lenges confronting scientists who study the Earth system. In
direction of Earth's magnetic field, just as oceanic rocks do this section, we will discuss several aspects of the problem
when they are created by seafloor spreading. Like a compass that have been central to recent research by these scientists.
frozen in time, the fossil magnetism of a continental frag- As Arthur Holmes and other early advocates of continen-
ment records its ancient orientation and position. tal drift realized, mantle convection is the "engine" that
The left side of Figure 2.13 shows one of the latest drives the large-scale tectonic processes operating on Earth's
efforts to depict the pre-Pangaean configuration of conti- surface. In Chapter 1, we described the mantle as a hot solid
nents. It is truly impressive that modern science can recover capable of flowing like a sticky fluid (warm wax or cold
the geography of this strange world of hundreds of millions syrup, for example). Heat escaping from Earth's deep interior
of years ago. The evidence from rock types, fossils, climate, causes this material to convect (circulate upward and down-
and paleomagnetism has allowed scientists to reconstruct ward) at speeds of a few tens of millimeters per year.
an earlier supercontinent, called Rodinia, that formed about Almost all scientists now accept that the lithospheric
1.1 billion years ago and began to break up about 750 mil- plates somehow participate in the flow of this mantle con-
lion years ago. They have been able to chart its fragments vection system. As is often the case, however, "the devil is
over the subsequent 500 million years as these fragments in the details." Many different hypotheses have been
drifted and reassembled into the supercontinent of Pangaea. advanced on the basis of one piece of evidence or another,
Geologists continue to sort out more details of this complex but no one has yet come up with a satisfactory, comprehen-
jigsaw puzzle, whose individual pieces change shape over sive theory that ties everything together. In what follows, we
geologic time. will pose three questions that get at the heart of the matter
and give you our opinions about their answers. But you
should be careful not to accept these tentative answers as
facts. Our understanding of the mantle convection system
remains a work in progress, which we may have to alter as
Hardly any branch of geology remains untouched by this new evidence becomes available. Future editions of this
grand reconstruction of the continents. Economic geologists book may contain different answers!
have used the fit of the continents to find mineral and oil
deposits by correlating the rock formations in which they
exist on one continent with their predrift continuations on
another continent. Paleontologists have rethought some as-
pects of evolution in light of continental drift. Geologists Here's an experiment you can do in your kitchen: heat a pan
have broadened their focus from the geology of a particular of water until it is about to boil, then sprinkle some dry tea
region to a world-encompassing picture. The concept of leaves in the center of the pan. You will notice that the leaves
plate tectonics provides a way to interpret, in global terms, move across the surface of the water, dragged along by the
such geologic processes as rock formation, mountain build- convection currents in the hot water. Is this the way plates
ing, and climate change. move about, passively dragged to and fro on the backs of
Oceanographers are reconstructing currents as they convection currents rising up from the mantle?
might have existed in the ancestral oceans to understand the The answer appears to be no. The main evidence comes
modern circulation better and to account for the variations in from the rates of plate motion we discussed earlier in this
deep-sea sediments that are affected by such currents. Sci- chapter. From Figure 2.5, we see that the faster-moving
entists are "forecasting" backward in time to describe tem- plates (the Pacific, Nazca, Cocos, and Indian plates) are
peratures, winds, the extent of continental glaciers, and the being subducted along a large fraction of their boundaries. In
level of the sea as they were in ancient times. They hope to contrast, the slower-moving plates (the North American,
learn from the past so that they can predict the future of the South American, African, Eurasian, and Antarctic plates) do
r
not have significant attachments of downgoing slabs. These The driving forces of plate tectonics are manifestations
observations suggest that the gravitational pull exerted by the of convection in the mantle, in the sense that they involve
cold (and thus heavy) slabs of old lithosphere cause rapid hot matter rising in one place and cold matter sinking in
plate motions. In other words, the plates are not dragged another. Although many questions remain, we can be rea-
along by convection currents from the deep mantle but rather sonably sure that (1) the plates themselves play an active
"fall back" into the mantle under their own weight. Accord- role in this system, and (2) the forces associated with the
ing to this hypothesis, seafloor spreading is the passive up- sinking slabs and elevated ridges are probably the most
welling of mantle material where the plates have been pulled important in governing the rates of plate motion. Scientists
apart by subduction forces. are attempting to resolve other issues raised in this discus-
But if the only important force in plate tectonics is the sion by comparing observations with detailed computer
gravitational pull of subducting slabs, why did Pangaea break models of the mantle convection system. Some results will
apart and the Atlantic Ocean open up? The only subducting be discussed in Chapter 14.
slabs of lithosphere currently attached to the North and South
American plates are found in the small island arcs that bound
the Caribbean and Scotia seas, which are thought to be too
small to drag the Atlantic apart. One possibility is that the
overriding plates, as well as the subducting plates, are pulled For plate tectonics to work, the lithospheric material that
toward their convergent boundaries. For example, as the goes down in subduction zones must be recycled through
Nazca Plate subducts beneath South America, it may cause the mantle and eventually come back up as new lithosphere
the plate boundary at the Peru-Chile Trench to retreat toward created along the spreading centers of the mid-ocean ridges.
the Pacific, "sucking" the South American Plate to the west. How deep into the mantle does this recycling process ex-
Another possibility is that Pangaea acted as an insulat- tend? That is, where is the lower boundary of the mantle
ing blanket, preventing heat from getting out of Earth's man- convection system?
tle (as it otherwise would through the process of seafloor The deepest the boundary can be is about 2900 km
spreading). The heat presumably built up over time, forming below Earth's outer surface, where a sharp boundary sepa-
hot bulges in the mantle beneath the supercontinent. These rates the mantle from the core. As we saw in Chapter 1, the
bulges raised Pangaea slightly and caused it to rift apart in a iron-rich liquid below this core-mantle boundary is much
kind of "landslide" off the top of the bulges. Gravitational denser than the solid rocks of the mantle, preventing any sig-
forces continued to drive subsequent seafloor spreading as nificant exchange of material between the two layers. We
the plates "slid downhill" off the crest of the Mid-Atlantic can thus imagine a system of whole-mantle convection in
Ridge. Earthquakes that sometimes occur in plate interiors which the material from the plates circulates all the way
show direct evidence of the compression of plates by these through the mantle, down as far as the core-mantle bound-
"ridge push" forces. ary (Figure 2.14a).
 In the early days of plate tectonics theory, however, Asia, and other sites adjacent to plate collision boundaries.
many scientists were convinced that plate recycling takes These zones occur as extensions of descending lithospheric
place at much shallower depths in the mantle. The evidence slabs, and some appear to go down as far as the core-
came from deep earthquakes that mark the descent of litho- mantle boundary. From this evidence, most scientists have
spheric slabs in subduction zones. The greatest depth of these concluded that plate recycling takes place through whole-
earthquakes varies among subduction zones, depending on mantle convection rather than stratified convection.
how cold the descending slabs are, but geologists found that
no earthquakes were occurring below about 700 km. More-
over, the properties of earthquakes at these great depths indi-
cated that the slabs were encountering more rigid material
that slowed and perhaps blocked their downward progress. Mantle convection implies that what goes down must come
Based on this and other evidence, scientists hypothe- up. Scientists have learned a lot about downgoing convec-
sized that the mantle might be divided into two layers: an tion currents because they are marked by narrow zones of
upper mantle system in the outer 700 km, where the recy- cold subducted lithosphere that can be detected by earth-
cling of lithosphere takes place, and a lower mantle system, quake waves. What about the rising currents of mantle mate-
from 700 km deep to the core-mantle boundary, where con- rial needed to balance subduction? Are there concentrated,
vection is much more sluggish. According to this hypothe- sheetlike upwellings directly beneath the mid-ocean ridges?
sis, called stratified convection, the separation of the two Most scientists who study the problem think not. Instead,
systems is maintained because the upper system consists of they believe that the rising currents are slower and spread
lighter rocks than the lower system and thus floats on top, in out over broader regions. This view is consistent with the
the same way the mantle floats on the core (Figure 2.14b). idea, discussed above, that seafloor spreading is a rather pas-
The way to test these two competing hypotheses is to sive process: pull the plates apart almost anywhere, and you
look for "lithospheric graveyards" below the convergent will generate a spreading center.
zones where old plates have been subducted. Old subducted There is one big exception, however: a type of narrow,
lithosphere is colder than the surrounding mantle and can jetlike upwelling called a mantle plume (Figure 2.15). The
therefore be "seen" using earthquake waves (much as doc- best evidence for mantle plumes comes from regions of in-
tors use ultrasound waves to look into your body). More- tense, localized volcanism (called hot spots), such as Hawaii,
over, there should be lots of it down there. From our knowl- where huge volcanoes are forming in the middle of plates, far
edge of past plate motions, we can estimate that, just since away from any spreading center. The plumes are thought to
the breakup of Pangaea, lithosphere equivalent to the surface be slender cylinders of fast-rising material, less than 100 km
area of Earth has been recycled back into the mantle. Sure across, that come from the deep mantle, perhaps forming in
enough, scientists have found regions of colder material in very hot regions near the core-mantle boundary. Mantle
the deep mantle under North and South America, eastern plumes are so intense that they can literally burn holes in the
plates and erupt tremendous volumes of lava. Plumes may
be responsible for the massive outpourings of lava—mil-
lions of cubic kilometers—found in such places as Siberia
and the Columbia Plateau of eastern Washington and Ore- What is the theory of plate tectonics? According to the the-
gon. Some of these lava floods were so large and occurred ory of plate tectonics, the lithosphere is broken into about a
so quickly that they may have changed Earth's climate and dozen rigid, moving plates. Three types of plate boundaries
killed off many life-forms in mass extinction events (see are defined by the relative motion between plates: divergent,
Chapter 1). We will describe plume volcanism in more detail convergent, and transform fault. The area of Earth's surface
in Chapter 12. does not change through geologic time; therefore, the area of
The plume hypothesis was first put forward in 1970, new plate created at divergent boundaries—the spreading
soon after the plate theory had been established, by*one of centers of mid-ocean ridges—equals the plate area consumed
the founders of plate tectonics, W. Jason Morgan of Prince- at convergent boundaries by the process of subduction.
ton University. Like other aspects of the mantle convection
system, however, the observations that bear on rising con- What are some of the geologic characteristics of plate
vection currents are indirect, and the plume hypothesis re- boundaries? In addition to earthquake belts, many large-
mains very controversial. scale geologic features, such as narrow mountain belts and
chains of volcanoes, are associated with plate boundaries.
Convergent boundaries are marked by deep-sea trenches,
earthquake belts, mountains, and volcanoes. The Andes and
the trenches of the western coast of South America are mod-
ern examples. Old mountain belts, such as the Appalachians
and the Urals, are the remnants of ancient continental colli-
sions. Divergent boundaries are typically marked by volcanic
Earlier, we considered the scientific method and how it activity and earthquakes at the crest of a mid-ocean ridge,
guides the-work of geologists. In the context of the scientific such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Transform-fault boundaries,
method, plate tectonics is not a dogma but a confirmed the- along which plates slide past each other, can be recognized
ory whose strength lies in its simplicity, its generality, and its by their linear topography, earthquake activity, and, in the
consistency with many types of observations. Theories can oceans, offsets in magnetic anomaly bands.
always be overturned or modified. As we have seen, compet-
ing hypotheses have been advanced about how convection How can the age of the seafloor be determined? We can
generates plate tectonics. But the theory of plate tectonics— measure the age of the ocean's floor by comparing magnetic
like the theories of Earth's age, the evolution of life, and anomaly bands mapped on the seafloor with the sequence of
genetics—explains so much so well and has survived so magnetic reversals worked out on land. The procedure has
many efforts to prove it false that geologists treat it as fact. been verified and extended by deep-sea drilling. Geologists
The question remains, why wasn't plate tectonics dis- can now draw isochrons for most of the world's oceans,
covered earlier? Why did it take the scientific establishment enabling them to reconstruct the history of seafloor spread-
so long to move from skepticism about continental drift to ing over the past 200 million years. Using this method and
acceptance of plate tectonics? Scientists approach their sub- other geologic data, geologists have developed a detailed
jects differently. Scientists with particularly inquiring, unin- model of how Pangaea broke apart and the continents drifted
hibited, and synthesizing minds are often the first to per- into their present configuration.
ceive great truths. Although their perceptions frequently turn
out to be false (think of the mistakes Wegener made in pro- What is the engine that drives plate tectonics? The plate
posing continental drift), these visionary people are often tectonic system is driven by mantle convection, and the
the first to see the great generalizations of science. De- energy comes from Earth's internal heat. The plates them-
servedly, they are the ones history remembers. selves play an active role in this system. For example, the
Most scientists, however, proceed more cautiously and most important forces in plate tectonics come from the cool-
wait out the slow process of gathering supporting evidence. ing lithosphere as it slides away from spreading centers and
Continental drift and seafloor spreading were slow to be sinks back into the mantle in subduction zones. Lithospheric
accepted largely because the audacious ideas came far ahead slabs extend as deep as the core-mantle boundary, indicating
of the firm evidence. Scientists had to explore the oceans, that the whole mantle is involved in the convection system
develop new instruments, and drill the seafloor before the that recycles the plates. Rising convection currents may
majority could be convinced. Today, many scientists are still include mantle plumes, intense upwellings from the deep
waiting to be convinced of ideas about how the mantle con- mantle that cause localized volcanism at hot spots such as
vection system really works. Hawaii.

|
 4. Name three mountain belts that formed by continental col-
lisions that are occurring now or have occurred in the past.
5. Most active volcanoes are located on or near plate
boundaries. Give an example of a volcano that is not on a
plate boundary and describe a hypothesis consistent with
plate tectonics that can explain it.

I THOUGHT QUESTIONS |
1. Why are there active volcanoes along the Pacific coast
in Washington and Oregon but not along the eastern coast
of the United States?
2. What mistakes did Wegener make in formulating his
1. From Figure 2.5, trace the boundaries of the South Amer- theory of continental drift? Do you think the geologists of
ican Plate on a sheet of paper and identify segments that are his era were justified in rejecting his theory?
divergent, convergent, and transform-fault boundaries. Ap-
3. Would you characterize plate tectonics as a hypothesis,
proximately what fraction of the plate area is occupied by
a theory, or a fact? Why?
the South American continent? Is the fraction of the South
American Plate occupied by oceanic crust increasing or 4. In Figure 2.12, the isochrons are symmetrically distrib-
decreasing over time? Explain your answer using the princi- uted in the Atlantic Ocean but not in the Pacific. For exam-
ples of plate tectonics. ple, the oldest seafloor (in darkest blue) is found in the
western Pacific Ocean but not in the eastern Pacific. Why?
2. In Figure 2.5, identify an example of a transform-fault 5. The theory of plate tectonics was not widely accepted
boundary that (a) connects a divergent plate boundary with until the magnetic striping of the ocean floor was discovered.
a convergent plate boundary and (b) connects a convergent In light of earlier observations—the jigsaw-puzzle fit of the
plate boundary with another convergent plate boundary. continents, the occurrence of fossils of the same life-forms
on both sides of the Atlantic, and paleoclimatic conditions—
3. From the isochron map in Figure 2.12, estimate how long
why is the magnetic striping such a key piece of evidence?
ago the continents of Australia and Antarctica were sepa-
rated by seafloor spreading. Did this happen before or after 6. How do the differences between continental and
South America separated from Africa? oceanic crust affect the way plates interact?