Plate tectonics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Plate tectonic)

The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of the 20th century.

Remnants of the Farallon Plate, deep in Earth's mantle. It is thought that much of the plate
initially went under North America (particularly the western United States and southwest
Canada) at a very shallow angle, creating much of the mountainous terrain in the area
(particularly the southern Rocky Mountains).
Key topics on

Geology

Grand Canyon

Overview[show]
Dating methods[show]
omposition and structure[show]
Historical geology[show]
Motion[show]
Hydrogeology[show]
Geophysics[show]
History of geologic science[show]

Earth Sciences Portal

Category Related topics

v
t
e

Plate tectonics (from the Late Latin tectonicus, from the Greek: "pertaining to
building")[1] is a scientific theory that describes the large-scale motion of Earth's lithosphere.
This theoretical model builds on the concept of continental drift which was developed during the

first few decades of the 20th century. The geoscientific community accepted the theory after the
concepts of seafloor spreading were later developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The lithosphere, which is the rigid outermost shell of a planet (on Earth, the crust and upper
mantle), is broken up into tectonic plates. On Earth, there are seven or eight major plates
(depending on how they are defined) and many minor plates. Where plates meet, their relative
motion determines the type of boundary; convergent, divergent, or transform. Earthquakes,
volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation occur along these plate
boundaries. The lateral relative movement of the plates typically varies from zero to 100 mm
annually.[2]
Tectonic plates are composed of oceanic lithosphere and thicker continental lithosphere, each
topped by its own kind of crust. Along convergent boundaries, subduction carries plates into the
mantle; the material lost is roughly balanced by the formation of new (oceanic) crust along
divergent margins by seafloor spreading. In this way, the total surface of the globe remains the
same. This prediction of plate tectonics is also referred to as the conveyor belt principle. Earlier
theories (that still have some supporters) propose gradual shrinking (contraction) or gradual
expansion of the globe.[3]
Tectonic plates are able to move because the Earth's lithosphere has greater strength than the
underlying asthenosphere. Lateral density variations in the mantle result in convection. Plate
movement is thought to be driven by a combination of the motion of the seafloor away from the
spreading ridge (due to variations in topography and density of the crust, which result in
differences in gravitational forces) and drag, with downward suction, at the subduction zones.
Another explanation lies in the different forces generated by the rotation of the globe and the
tidal forces of the Sun and Moon. The relative importance of each of these factors and their
relationship to each other is unclear, and still the subject of much debate.

Contents

1 Key principles
2 Types of plate boundaries
3 Driving forces of plate motion
o 3.1 Driving forces related to mantle dynamics
o 3.2 Driving forces related to gravity
o 3.3 Driving forces related to Earth rotation
o 3.4 Relative significance of each driving force mechanism
4 Development of the theory
o 4.1 Summary
o 4.2 Continental drift
o 4.3 Floating continents, paleomagnetism, and seismicity zones
o 4.4 Mid-oceanic ridge spreading and convection
o 4.5 Magnetic striping
o 4.6 Definition and refining of the theory
5 Implications for biogeography
6 Plate reconstruction

o
o
o

6.1 Defining plate boundaries

6.2 Past plate motions
6.3 Formation and break-up of continents
7 Current plates
8 Other celestial bodies (planets, moons)
o 8.1 Venus
o 8.2 Mars
o 8.3 Galilean satellites of Jupiter
o 8.4 Titan, moon of Saturn
o 8.5 Exoplanets
9 See also
10 References
o 10.1 Notes
o 10.2 Cited books
o 10.3 Cited articles
11 External links
o 11.1 Videos

Key principles
The outer layers of the Earth are divided into the lithosphere and asthenosphere. This is based on
differences in mechanical properties and in the method for the transfer of heat. Mechanically, the
lithosphere is cooler and more rigid, while the asthenosphere is hotter and flows more easily. In
terms of heat transfer, the lithosphere loses heat by conduction, whereas the asthenosphere also
transfers heat by convection and has a nearly adiabatic temperature gradient. This division
should not be confused with the chemical subdivision of these same layers into the mantle
(comprising both the asthenosphere and the mantle portion of the lithosphere) and the crust: a
given piece of mantle may be part of the lithosphere or the asthenosphere at different times
depending on its temperature and pressure.
The key principle of plate tectonics is that the lithosphere exists as separate and distinct tectonic
plates, which ride on the fluid-like (visco-elastic solid) asthenosphere. Plate motions range up to
a typical 1040 mm/year (Mid-Atlantic Ridge; about as fast as fingernails grow), to about
160 mm/year (Nazca Plate; about as fast as hair grows).[4] The driving mechanism behind this
movement is described below.
Tectonic lithosphere plates consist of lithospheric mantle overlain by either or both of two types
of crustal material: oceanic crust (in older texts called sima from silicon and magnesium) and
continental crust (sial from silicon and aluminium). Average oceanic lithosphere is typically
100 km (62 mi) thick;[5] its thickness is a function of its age: as time passes, it conductively cools
and subjacent cooling mantle is added to its base. Because it is formed at mid-ocean ridges and
spreads outwards, its thickness is therefore a function of its distance from the mid-ocean ridge
where it was formed. For a typical distance that oceanic lithosphere must travel before being
subducted, the thickness varies from about 6 km (4 mi) thick at mid-ocean ridges to greater than
100 km (62 mi) at subduction zones; for shorter or longer distances, the subduction zone (and
therefore also the mean) thickness becomes smaller or larger, respectively.[6] Continental

lithosphere is typically ~200 km thick, though this varies considerably between basins, mountain
ranges, and stable cratonic interiors of continents. The two types of crust also differ in thickness,
with continental crust being considerably thicker than oceanic (35 km vs. 6 km).[7]
The location where two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Plate boundaries are commonly
associated with geological events such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features
such as mountains, volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches. The majority of the
world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific Plate's Ring of Fire being
the most active and widely known today. These boundaries are discussed in further detail below.
Some volcanoes occur in the interiors of plates, and these have been variously attributed to
internal plate deformation[8] and to mantle plumes.
As explained above, tectonic plates may include continental crust or oceanic crust, and most
plates contain both. For example, the African Plate includes the continent and parts of the floor
of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The distinction between oceanic crust and continental crust is
based on their modes of formation. Oceanic crust is formed at sea-floor spreading centers, and
continental crust is formed through arc volcanism and accretion of terranes through tectonic
processes, though some of these terranes may contain ophiolite sequences, which are pieces of
oceanic crust considered to be part of the continent when they exit the standard cycle of
formation and spreading centers and subduction beneath continents. Oceanic crust is also denser
than continental crust owing to their different compositions. Oceanic crust is denser because it
has less silicon and more heavier elements ("mafic") than continental crust ("felsic").[9] As a
result of this density stratification, oceanic crust generally lies below sea level (for example most
of the Pacific Plate), while continental crust buoyantly projects above sea level (see the page
isostasy for explanation of this principle).

Types of plate boundaries

Main article: List of tectonic plate interactions
Three types of plate boundaries exist,[10] with a fourth, mixed type, characterized by the way the
plates move relative to each other. They are associated with different types of surface
phenomena. The different types of plate boundaries are:[11][12]
1. Transform boundaries (Conservative) occur where two lithospheric plates slide, or
perhaps more accurately, grind past each other along transform faults, where plates are
neither created nor destroyed. The relative motion of the two plates is either sinistral (left
side toward the observer) or dextral (right side toward the observer). Transform faults
occur across a spreading center. Strong earthquakes can occur along fault. The San
Andreas Fault in California is an example of a transform boundary exhibiting dextral
motion.
2. Divergent boundaries (Constructive) occur where two plates slide apart from each other.
At zones of ocean-to-ocean rifting, divergent boundaries form by seafloor spreading,
allowing for the formation of new ocean basin. As the continent splits, the ridge forms at
the spreading center, the ocean basin expands, and finally, the plate area increases
causing many small volcanoes and/or shallow earthquakes. At zones of continent-to-

continent rifting, divergent boundaries may cause new ocean basin to form as the
continent splits, spreads, the central rift collapses, and ocean fills the basin. Active zones
of Mid-ocean ridges (e.g., Mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific Rise), and continent-tocontinent rifting (such as Africa's East African Rift and Valley, Red Sea) are examples of
divergent boundaries.
3. Convergent boundaries (Destructive) (or active margins) occur where two plates slide
toward each other to form either a subduction zone (one plate moving underneath the
other) or a continental collision. At zones of ocean-to-continent subduction (e.g., Western
South America, and Cascade Mountains in Western United States), the dense oceanic
lithosphere plunges beneath the less dense continent. Earthquakes then trace the path of
the downward-moving plate as it descends into asthenosphere, a trench forms, and as the
subducted plate partially melts, magma rises to form continental volcanoes. At zones of
ocean-to-ocean subduction (e.g., the Andes mountain range in South America, Aleutian
islands, Mariana islands, and the Japanese island arc), older, cooler, denser crust slips
beneath less dense crust. This causes earthquakes and a deep trench to form in an arc
shape. The upper mantle of the subducted plate then heats and magma rises to form
curving chains of volcanic islands. Deep marine trenches are typically associated with
subduction zones, and the basins that develop along the active boundary are often called
"foreland basins". The subducting slab contains many hydrous minerals which release
their water on heating. This water then causes the mantle to melt, producing volcanism.
Closure of ocean basins can occur at continent-to-continent boundaries (e.g., Himalayas
and Alps): collision between masses of granitic continental lithosphere; neither mass is
subducted; plate edges are compressed, folded, uplifted.
4. Plate boundary zones occur where the effects of the interactions are unclear, and the
boundaries, usually occurring along a broad belt, are not well defined and may show
various types of movements in different episodes.

Three types of plate boundary.

Driving forces of plate motion

Plate motion based on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data from NASA JPL. The
vectors show direction and magnitude of motion.
Plate tectonics is basically a kinematic phenomenon. Scientists agree on the observation and
deduction that the plates have moved with respect to one another but continue to debate as to
how and when. A major question remains as to what geodynamic mechanism motors plate
movement. Here, science diverges in different theories.
It is generally accepted that tectonic plates are able to move because of the relative density of
oceanic lithosphere and the relative weakness of the asthenosphere. Dissipation of heat from the
mantle is acknowledged to be the original source of the energy required to drive plate tectonics
through convection or large scale upwelling and doming. The current view, though still a matter
of some debate, asserts that as a consequence, a powerful source of plate motion is generated due
to the excess density of the oceanic lithosphere sinking in subduction zones. When the new crust
forms at mid-ocean ridges, this oceanic lithosphere is initially less dense than the underlying
asthenosphere, but it becomes denser with age as it conductively cools and thickens. The greater
density of old lithosphere relative to the underlying asthenosphere allows it to sink into the deep
mantle at subduction zones, providing most of the driving force for plate movement. The
weakness of the asthenosphere allows the tectonic plates to move easily towards a subduction
zone.[13] Although subduction is believed to be the strongest force driving plate motions, it
cannot be the only force since there are plates such as the North American Plate which are
moving, yet are nowhere being subducted. The same is true for the enormous Eurasian Plate. The
sources of plate motion are a matter of intensive research and discussion among scientists. One
of the main points is that the kinematic pattern of the movement itself should be separated clearly
from the possible geodynamic mechanism that is invoked as the driving force of the observed
movement, as some patterns may be explained by more than one mechanism.[14] In short, the
driving forces advocated at the moment can be divided into three categories based on the
relationship to the movement: mantle dynamics related, gravity related (mostly secondary
forces), and Earth rotation related.

Driving forces related to mantle dynamics

Main article: Mantle convection

For much of the last quarter century, the leading theory of the driving force behind tectonic plate
motions envisaged large scale convection currents in the upper mantle which are transmitted
through the asthenosphere. This theory was launched by Arthur Holmes and some forerunners in
the 1930s[15] and was immediately recognized as the solution for the acceptance of the theory as
originally discussed in the papers of Alfred Wegener in the early years of the century. However,
despite its acceptance, it was long debated in the scientific community because the leading
("fixist") theory still envisaged a static Earth without moving continents up until the major
breakthroughs of the early sixties.
Two and threedimensional imaging of Earth's interior (seismic tomography) shows a varying
lateral density distribution throughout the mantle. Such density variations can be material (from
rock chemistry), mineral (from variations in mineral structures), or thermal (through thermal
expansion and contraction from heat energy). The manifestation of this varying lateral density is
mantle convection from buoyancy forces.[16]
How mantle convection directly and indirectly relates to plate motion is a matter of ongoing
study and discussion in geodynamics. Somehow, this energy must be transferred to the
lithosphere for tectonic plates to move. There are essentially two types of forces that are thought
to influence plate motion: friction and gravity.

Basal drag (friction): Plate motion driven by friction between the convection currents in
the asthenosphere and the more rigid overlying lithosphere.
Slab suction (gravity): Plate motion driven by local convection currents that exert a
downward pull on plates in subduction zones at ocean trenches. Slab suction may occur
in a geodynamic setting where basal tractions continue to act on the plate as it dives into
the mantle (although perhaps to a greater extent acting on both the under and upper side
of the slab).

Lately, the convection theory has been much debated as modern techniques based on 3D seismic
tomography still fail to recognize these predicted large scale convection cells. Therefore,
alternative views have been proposed:
In the theory of plume tectonics developed during the 1990s, a modified concept of mantle
convection currents is used. It asserts that super plumes rise from the deeper mantle and are the
drivers or substitutes of the major convection cells. These ideas, which find their roots in the
early 1930s with the so-called "fixistic" ideas of the European and Russian Earth Science
Schools, find resonance in the modern theories which envisage hot spots/mantle plumes which
remain fixed and are overridden by oceanic and continental lithosphere plates over time and
leave their traces in the geological record (though these phenomena are not invoked as real
driving mechanisms, but rather as modulators). Modern theories that continue building on the
older mantle doming concepts and see plate movements as a secondary phenomena are beyond
the scope of this page and are discussed elsewhere (for example on the plume tectonics page).
Another theory is that the mantle flows neither in cells nor large plumes but rather as a series of
channels just below the Earth's crust which then provide basal friction to the lithosphere. This

theory is called "surge tectonics" and became quite popular in geophysics and geodynamics
during the 1980s and 1990s.[17]

Driving forces related to gravity

Forces related to gravity are usually invoked as secondary phenomena within the framework of a
more general driving mechanism such as the various forms of mantle dynamics described above.
Gravitational sliding away from a spreading ridge: According to many authors, plate motion is
driven by the higher elevation of plates at ocean ridges.[18] As oceanic lithosphere is formed at
spreading ridges from hot mantle material, it gradually cools and thickens with age (and thus
adds distance from the ridge). Cool oceanic lithosphere is significantly denser than the hot
mantle material from which it is derived and so with increasing thickness it gradually subsides
into the mantle to compensate the greater load. The result is a slight lateral incline with increased
distance from the ridge axis.
This force is regarded as a secondary force and is often referred to as "ridge push". This is a
misnomer as nothing is "pushing" horizontally and tensional features are dominant along ridges.
It is more accurate to refer to this mechanism as gravitational sliding as variable topography
across the totality of the plate can vary considerably and the topography of spreading ridges is
only the most prominent feature. Other mechanisms generating this gravitational secondary force
include flexural bulging of the lithosphere before it dives underneath an adjacent plate which
produces a clear topographical feature that can offset, or at least affect, the influence of
topographical ocean ridges, and mantle plumes and hot spots, which are postulated to impinge on
the underside of tectonic plates.
Slab-pull: Current scientific opinion is that the asthenosphere is insufficiently competent or rigid
to directly cause motion by friction along the base of the lithosphere. Slab pull is therefore most
widely thought to be the greatest force acting on the plates. In this current understanding, plate
motion is mostly driven by the weight of cold, dense plates sinking into the mantle at trenches.[19]
Recent models indicate that trench suction plays an important role as well. However, as the
North American Plate is nowhere being subducted, yet it is in motion presents a problem. The
same holds for the African, Eurasian, and Antarctic plates.
Gravitational sliding away from mantle doming: According to older theories, one of the driving
mechanisms of the plates is the existence of large scale asthenosphere/mantle domes which cause
the gravitational sliding of lithosphere plates away from them. This gravitational sliding
represents a secondary phenomenon of this basically vertically oriented mechanism. This can act
on various scales, from the small scale of one island arc up to the larger scale of an entire ocean
basin.[20]

Driving forces related to Earth rotation

Alfred Wegener, being a meteorologist, had proposed tidal forces and pole flight force as the
main driving mechanisms behind continental drift; however, these forces were considered far too
small to cause continental motion as the concept then was of continents plowing through oceanic

crust.[21] Therefore, Wegener later changed his position and asserted that convection currents are
the main driving force of plate tectonics in the last edition of his book in 1929.
However, in the plate tectonics context (accepted since the seafloor spreading proposals of
Heezen, Hess, Dietz, Morley, Vine, and Matthews (see below) during the early 1960s), oceanic
crust is suggested to be in motion with the continents which caused the proposals related to Earth
rotation to be reconsidered. In more recent literature, these driving forces are:
1. Tidal drag due to the gravitational force the Moon (and the Sun) exerts on the crust of the
Earth[22]
2. Shear strain of the Earth globe due to N-S compression related to its rotation and
modulations;
3. Pole flight force: equatorial drift due to rotation and centrifugal effects: tendency of the
plates to move from the poles to the equator ("Polflucht");
4. The Coriolis effect acting on plates when they move around the globe;
5. Global deformation of the geoid due to small displacements of rotational pole with
respect to the Earth's crust;
6. Other smaller deformation effects of the crust due to wobbles and spin movements of the
Earth rotation on a smaller time scale.
For these mechanisms to be overall valid, systematic relationships should exist all over the globe
between the orientation and kinematics of deformation and the geographical latitudinal and
longitudinal grid of the Earth itself. Ironically, these systematic relations studies in the second
half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century underline exactly the
opposite: that the plates had not moved in time, that the deformation grid was fixed with respect
to the Earth equator and axis, and that gravitational driving forces were generally acting
vertically and caused only local horizontal movements (the so-called pre-plate tectonic, "fixist
theories"). Later studies (discussed below on this page), therefore, invoked many of the
relationships recognized during this pre-plate tectonics period to support their theories (see the
anticipations and reviews in the work of van Dijk and collaborators).[23]
Of the many forces discussed in this paragraph, tidal force is still highly debated and defended as
a possible principle driving force of plate tectonics. The other forces are only used in global
geodynamic models not using plate tectonics concepts (therefore beyond the discussions treated
in this section) or proposed as minor modulations within the overall plate tectonics model.
In 1973, George W. Moore[24] of the USGS and R. C. Bostrom[25] presented evidence for a
general westward drift of the Earth's lithosphere with respect to the mantle. He concluded that
tidal forces (the tidal lag or "friction") caused by the Earth's rotation and the forces acting upon it
by the Moon are a driving force for plate tectonics. As the Earth spins eastward beneath the
moon, the moon's gravity ever so slightly pulls the Earth's surface layer back westward, just as
proposed by Alfred Wegener (see above). In a more recent 2006 study,[26] scientists reviewed
and advocated these earlier proposed ideas. It has also been suggested recently in Lovett (2006)
that this observation may also explain why Venus and Mars have no plate tectonics, as Venus
has no moon and Mars' moons are too small to have significant tidal effects on the planet. In a
recent paper,[27] it was suggested that, on the other hand, it can easily be observed that many

plates are moving north and eastward, and that the dominantly westward motion of the Pacific
ocean basins derives simply from the eastward bias of the Pacific spreading center (which is not
a predicted manifestation of such lunar forces). In the same paper the authors admit, however,
that relative to the lower mantle, there is a slight westward component in the motions of all the
plates. They demonstrated though that the westward drift, seen only for the past 30 Ma, is
attributed to the increased dominance of the steadily growing and accelerating Pacific plate. The
debate is still open.

Relative significance of each driving force mechanism

The actual vector of a plate's motion is a function of all the forces acting on the plate; however,
therein lies the problem regarding what degree each process contributes to the overall motion of
each tectonic plate.
The diversity of geodynamic settings and the properties of each plate must clearly result from
differences in the degree to which multiple processes are actively driving each individual plate.
One method of dealing with this problem is to consider the relative rate at which each plate is
moving and to consider the available evidence of each driving force on the plate as far as
possible.
One of the most significant correlations found is that lithospheric plates attached to downgoing
(subducting) plates move much faster than plates not attached to subducting plates. The Pacific
plate, for instance, is essentially surrounded by zones of subduction (the so-called Ring of Fire)
and moves much faster than the plates of the Atlantic basin, which are attached (perhaps one
could say 'welded') to adjacent continents instead of subducting plates. It is thus thought that
forces associated with the downgoing plate (slab pull and slab suction) are the driving forces
which determine the motion of plates, except for those plates which are not being subducted.[19]
The driving forces of plate motion continue to be active subjects of on-going research within
geophysics and tectonophysics.

Development of the theory

Further information: Timeline of the development of tectonophysics

Summary

Detailed map showing the tectonic plates with their movement vectors.
In line with other previous and contemporaneous proposals, in 1912 the meteorologist Alfred
Wegener amply described what he called continental drift, expanded in his 1915 book The
Origin of Continents and Oceans[28] and the scientific debate started that would end up fifty
years later in the theory of plate tectonics.[29] Starting from the idea (also expressed by his
forerunners) that the present continents once formed a single land mass (which was called
Pangea later on) that drifted apart, thus releasing the continents from the Earth's mantle and
likening them to "icebergs" of low density granite floating on a sea of denser basalt.[30]
Supporting evidence for the idea came from the dove-tailing outlines of South America's east
coast and Africa's west coast, and from the matching of the rock formations along these edges.
Confirmation of their previous contiguous nature also came from the fossil plants Glossopteris
and Gangamopteris, and the therapsid or mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus, all widely
distributed over South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia. The evidence for such
an erstwhile joining of these continents was patent to field geologists working in the southern
hemisphere. The South African Alex du Toit put together a mass of such information in his 1937
publication Our Wandering Continents, and went further than Wegener in recognising the strong
links between the Gondwana fragments.
But without detailed evidence and a force sufficient to drive the movement, the theory was not
generally accepted: the Earth might have a solid crust and mantle and a liquid core, but there
seemed to be no way that portions of the crust could move around. Distinguished scientists, such
as Harold Jeffreys and Charles Schuchert, were outspoken critics of continental drift.
Despite much opposition, the view of continental drift gained support and a lively debate started
between "drifters" or "mobilists" (proponents of the theory) and "fixists" (opponents). During the
1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the former reached important milestones proposing that convection
currents might have driven the plate movements, and that spreading may have occurred below
the sea within the oceanic crust. Concepts close to the elements now incorporated in plate
tectonics were proposed by geophysicists and geologists (both fixists and mobilists) like VeningMeinesz, Holmes, and Umbgrove.
One of the first pieces of geophysical evidence that was used to support the movement of
lithospheric plates came from paleomagnetism. This is based on the fact that rocks of different
ages show a variable magnetic field direction, evidenced by studies since the midnineteenth
century. The magnetic north and south poles reverse through time, and, especially important in

paleotectonic studies, the relative position of the magnetic north pole varies through time.
Initially, during the first half of the twentieth century, the latter phenomenon was explained by
introducing what was called "polar wander" (see apparent polar wander), i.e., it was assumed that
the north pole location had been shifting through time. An alternative explanation, though, was
that the continents had moved (shifted and rotated) relative to the north pole, and each continent,
in fact, shows its own "polar wander path". During the late 1950s it was successfully shown on
two occasions that these data could show the validity of continental drift: by Keith Runcorn in a
paper in 1956,[31] and by Warren Carey in a symposium held in March 1956.[32]
The second piece of evidence in support of continental drift came during the late 1950s and early
60s from data on the bathymetry of the deep ocean floors and the nature of the oceanic crust such
as magnetic properties and, more generally, with the development of marine geology[33] which
gave evidence for the association of seafloor spreading along the mid-oceanic ridges and
magnetic field reversals, published between 1959 and 1963 by Heezen, Dietz, Hess, Mason, Vine
& Matthews, and Morley.[34]
Simultaneous advances in early seismic imaging techniques in and around Wadati-Benioff zones
along the trenches bounding many continental margins, together with many other geophysical
(e.g. gravimetric) and geological observations, showed how the oceanic crust could disappear
into the mantle, providing the mechanism to balance the extension of the ocean basins with
shortening along its margins.
All this evidence, both from the ocean floor and from the continental margins, made it clear
around 1965 that continental drift was feasible and the theory of plate tectonics, which was
defined in a series of papers between 1965 and 1967, was born, with all its extraordinary
explanatory and predictive power. The theory revolutionized the Earth sciences, explaining a
diverse range of geological phenomena and their implications in other studies such as
paleogeography and paleobiology.

Continental drift
For more details on this topic, see Continental drift.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, geologists assumed that the Earth's major features were
fixed, and that most geologic features such as basin development and mountain ranges could be
explained by vertical crustal movement, described in what is called the geosynclinal theory.
Generally, this was placed in the context of a contracting planet Earth due to heat loss in the
course of a relatively short geological time.

Alfred Wegener in Greenland in the winter of 1912-13.

It was observed as early as 1596 that the opposite coasts of the Atlantic Oceanor, more
precisely, the edges of the continental shelveshave similar shapes and seem to have once fitted
together.[35]
Since that time many theories were proposed to explain this apparent complementarity, but the
assumption of a solid Earth made these various proposals difficult to accept.[36]
The discovery of radioactivity and its associated heating properties in 1895 prompted a reexamination of the apparent age of the Earth.[37] This had previously been estimated by its
cooling rate and assumption the Earth's surface radiated like a black body.[38] Those calculations
had implied that, even if it started at red heat, the Earth would have dropped to its present
temperature in a few tens of millions of years. Armed with the knowledge of a new heat source,
scientists realized that the Earth would be much older, and that its core was still sufficiently hot
to be liquid.
By 1915, after having published a first article in 1912,[39] Alfred Wegener was making serious
arguments for the idea of continental drift in the first edition of The Origin of Continents and
Oceans.[28] In that book (re-issued in four successive editions up to the final one in 1936), he
noted how the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa looked as if they were
once attached. Wegener was not the first to note this (Abraham Ortelius, Antonio SniderPellegrini, Eduard Suess, Roberto Mantovani and Frank Bursley Taylor preceded him just to
mention a few), but he was the first to marshal significant fossil and paleo-topographical and
climatological evidence to support this simple observation (and was supported in this by
researchers such as Alex du Toit). Furthermore, when the rock strata of the margins of separate
continents are very similar it suggests that these rocks were formed in the same way, implying
that they were joined initially. For instance, parts of Scotland and Ireland contain rocks very
similar to those found in Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Furthermore, the Caledonian
Mountains of Europe and parts of the Appalachian Mountains of North America are very similar
in structure and lithology.
However, his ideas were not taken seriously by many geologists, who pointed out that there was
no apparent mechanism for continental drift. Specifically, they did not see how continental rock
could plow through the much denser rock that makes up oceanic crust. Wegener could not
explain the force that drove continental drift, and his vindication did not come until after his
death in 1930.

Floating continents, paleomagnetism, and seismicity zones

Global earthquake epicenters, 19631998

As it was observed early that although granite existed on continents, seafloor seemed to be
composed of denser basalt, the prevailing concept during the first half of the twentieth century
was that there were two types of crust, named "sial" (continental type crust) and "sima" (oceanic
type crust). Furthermore, it was supposed that a static shell of strata was present under the
continents. It therefore looked apparent that a layer of basalt (sial) underlies the continental
rocks.
However, based on abnormalities in plumb line deflection by the Andes in Peru, Pierre Bouguer
had deduced that less-dense mountains must have a downward projection into the denser layer
underneath. The concept that mountains had "roots" was confirmed by George B. Airy a hundred
years later, during study of Himalayan gravitation, and seismic studies detected corresponding
density variations. Therefore, by the mid-1950s, the question remained unresolved as to whether
mountain roots were clenched in surrounding basalt or were floating on it like an iceberg.
During the 20th century, improvements in and greater use of seismic instruments such as
seismographs enabled scientists to learn that earthquakes tend to be concentrated in specific
areas, most notably along the oceanic trenches and spreading ridges. By the late 1920s,
seismologists were beginning to identify several prominent earthquake zones parallel to the
trenches that typically were inclined 4060 from the horizontal and extended several hundred
kilometers into the Earth. These zones later became known as Wadati-Benioff zones, or simply
Benioff zones, in honor of the seismologists who first recognized them, Kiyoo Wadati of Japan
and Hugo Benioff of the United States. The study of global seismicity greatly advanced in the
1960s with the establishment of the Worldwide Standardized Seismograph Network
(WWSSN)[40] to monitor the compliance of the 1963 treaty banning above-ground testing of
nuclear weapons. The much improved data from the WWSSN instruments allowed seismologists
to map precisely the zones of earthquake concentration world wide.
Meanwhile, debates developed around the phenomena of polar wander. Since the early debates
of continental drift, scientists had discussed and used evidence that polar drift had occurred
because continents seemed to have moved through different climatic zones during the past.
Furthermore, paleomagnetic data had shown that the magnetic pole had also shifted during time.
Reasoning in an opposite way, the continents might have shifted and rotated, while the pole

remained relatively fixed. The first time the evidence of magnetic polar wander was used to
support the movements of continents was in a paper by Keith Runcorn in 1956,[31] and successive
papers by him and his students Ted Irving (who was actually the first to be convinced of the fact
that paleomagnetism supported continental drift) and Ken Creer.
This was immediately followed by a symposium in Tasmania in March 1956.[41] In this
symposium, the evidence was used in the theory of an expansion of the global crust. In this
hypothesis the shifting of the continents can be simply explained by a large increase in size of
the Earth since its formation. However, this was unsatisfactory because its supporters could offer
no convincing mechanism to produce a significant expansion of the Earth. Certainly there is no
evidence that the moon has expanded in the past 3 billion years; other work would soon show
that the evidence was equally in support of continental drift on a globe with a stable radius.
During the thirties up to the late fifties, works by Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, Umbgrove, and
numerous others outlined concepts that were close or nearly identical to modern plate tectonics
theory. In particular, the English geologist Arthur Holmes proposed in 1920 that plate junctions
might lie beneath the sea, and in 1928 that convection currents within the mantle might be the
driving force.[42] Often, these contributions are forgotten because:

At the time, continental drift was not accepted.

Some of these ideas were discussed in the context of abandoned fixistic ideas of a
deforming globe without continental drift or an expanding Earth.
They were published during an episode of extreme political and economic instability that
hampered scientific communication.
Many were published by European scientists and at first not mentioned or given little
credit in the papers on sea floor spreading published by the American researchers in the
1960s.

Mid-oceanic ridge spreading and convection

For more details on Mid-ocean ridge, see Seafloor spreading.
In 1947, a team of scientists led by Maurice Ewing utilizing the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution's research vessel Atlantis and an array of instruments, confirmed the existence of a
rise in the central Atlantic Ocean, and found that the floor of the seabed beneath the layer of
sediments consisted of basalt, not the granite which is the main constituent of continents. They
also found that the oceanic crust was much thinner than continental crust. All these new findings
raised important and intriguing questions.[43]
The new data that had been collected on the ocean basins also showed particular characteristics
regarding the bathymetry. One of the major outcomes of these datasets was that all along the
globe, a system of mid-oceanic ridges was detected. An important conclusion was that along this
system, new ocean floor was being created, which led to the concept of the "Great Global Rift".
This was described in the crucial paper of Bruce Heezen (1960),[44] which would trigger a real
revolution in thinking. A profound consequence of seafloor spreading is that new crust was, and
still is, being continually created along the oceanic ridges. Therefore, Heezen advocated the so-

called "expanding Earth" hypothesis of S. Warren Carey (see above). So, still the question
remained: how can new crust be continuously added along the oceanic ridges without increasing
the size of the Earth? In reality, this question had been solved already by numerous scientists
during the forties and the fifties, like Arthur Holmes, Vening-Meinesz, Coates and many others:
The crust in excess disappeared along what were called the oceanic trenches, where so-called
"subduction" occurred. Therefore, when various scientists during the early sixties started to
reason on the data at their disposal regarding the ocean floor, the pieces of the theory quickly fell
into place.
The question particularly intrigued Harry Hammond Hess, a Princeton University geologist and a
Naval Reserve Rear Admiral, and Robert S. Dietz, a scientist with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic
Survey who first coined the term seafloor spreading. Dietz and Hess (the former published the
same idea one year earlier in Nature,[45] but priority belongs to Hess who had already distributed
an unpublished manuscript of his 1962 article by 1960)[46] were among the small handful who
really understood the broad implications of sea floor spreading and how it would eventually
agree with the, at that time, unconventional and unaccepted ideas of continental drift and the
elegant and mobilistic models proposed by previous workers like Holmes.
In the same year, Robert R. Coats of the U.S. Geological Survey described the main features of
island arc subduction in the Aleutian Islands. His paper, though little noted (and even ridiculed)
at the time, has since been called "seminal" and "prescient". In reality, it actually shows that the
work by the European scientists on island arcs and mountain belts performed and published
during the 1930s up until the 1950s was applied and appreciated also in the United States.
If the Earth's crust was expanding along the oceanic ridges, Hess and Dietz reasoned like Holmes
and others before them, it must be shrinking elsewhere. Hess followed Heezen, suggesting that
new oceanic crust continuously spreads away from the ridges in a conveyor beltlike motion.
And, using the mobilistic concepts developed before, he correctly concluded that many millions
of years later, the oceanic crust eventually descends along the continental margins where oceanic
trenches very deep, narrow canyons are formed, e.g. along the rim of the Pacific Ocean basin.
The important step Hess made was that convection currents would be the driving force in this
process, arriving at the same conclusions as Holmes had decades before with the only difference
that the thinning of the ocean crust was performed using Heezen's mechanism of spreading along
the ridges. Hess therefore concluded that the Atlantic Ocean was expanding while the Pacific
Ocean was shrinking. As old oceanic crust is "consumed" in the trenches (like Holmes and
others, he thought this was done by thickening of the continental lithosphere, not, as now
understood, by underthrusting at a larger scale of the oceanic crust itself into the mantle), new
magma rises and erupts along the spreading ridges to form new crust. In effect, the ocean basins
are perpetually being "recycled," with the creation of new crust and the destruction of old
oceanic lithosphere occurring simultaneously. Thus, the new mobilistic concepts neatly
explained why the Earth does not get bigger with sea floor spreading, why there is so little
sediment accumulation on the ocean floor, and why oceanic rocks are much younger than
continental rocks.

Magnetic striping

Seafloor magnetic striping.

A demonstration of magnetic striping. (The darker the color is, the closer it is to normal polarity)
For more details on this topic, see VineMatthewsMorley hypothesis.
Beginning in the 1950s, scientists like Victor Vacquier, using magnetic instruments
(magnetometers) adapted from airborne devices developed during World War II to detect
submarines, began recognizing odd magnetic variations across the ocean floor. This finding,
though unexpected, was not entirely surprising because it was known that basaltthe iron-rich,
volcanic rock making up the ocean floorcontains a strongly magnetic mineral (magnetite) and
can locally distort compass readings. This distortion was recognized by Icelandic mariners as
early as the late 18th century. More important, because the presence of magnetite gives the basalt
measurable magnetic properties, these newly discovered magnetic variations provided another
means to study the deep ocean floor. When newly formed rock cools, such magnetic materials
recorded the Earth's magnetic field at the time.
As more and more of the seafloor was mapped during the 1950s, the magnetic variations turned
out not to be random or isolated occurrences, but instead revealed recognizable patterns. When
these magnetic patterns were mapped over a wide region, the ocean floor showed a zebra-like
pattern: one stripe with normal polarity and the adjoining stripe with reversed polarity. The
overall pattern, defined by these alternating bands of normally and reversely polarized rock,
became known as magnetic striping, and was published by Ron G. Mason and co-workers in
1961, who did not find, though, an explanation for these data in terms of sea floor spreading, like
Vine, Matthews and Morley a few years later.[47]
The discovery of magnetic striping called for an explanation. In the early 1960s scientists such as
Heezen, Hess and Dietz had begun to theorise that mid-ocean ridges mark structurally weak
zones where the ocean floor was being ripped in two lengthwise along the ridge crest (see the
previous paragraph). New magma from deep within the Earth rises easily through these weak
zones and eventually erupts along the crest of the ridges to create new oceanic crust. This
process, at first denominated the "conveyer belt hypothesis" and later called seafloor spreading,

operating over many millions of years continues to form new ocean floor all across the
50,000 km-long system of midocean ridges.
Only four years after the maps with the "zebra pattern" of magnetic stripes were published, the
link between sea floor spreading and these patterns was correctly placed, independently by
Lawrence Morley, and by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews, in 1963[48] now called the VineMatthews-Morley hypothesis. This hypothesis linked these patterns to geomagnetic reversals and
was supported by several lines of evidence:[49]
1. the stripes are symmetrical around the crests of the mid-ocean ridges; at or near the crest
of the ridge, the rocks are very young, and they become progressively older away from
the ridge crest;
2. the youngest rocks at the ridge crest always have present-day (normal) polarity;
3. stripes of rock parallel to the ridge crest alternate in magnetic polarity (normal-reversednormal, etc.), suggesting that they were formed during different epochs documenting the
(already known from independent studies) normal and reversal episodes of the Earth's
magnetic field.
By explaining both the zebra-like magnetic striping and the construction of the mid-ocean ridge
system, the seafloor spreading hypothesis (SFS) quickly gained converts and represented another
major advance in the development of the plate-tectonics theory. Furthermore, the oceanic crust
now came to be appreciated as a natural "tape recording" of the history of the geomagnetic field
reversals (GMFR) of the Earth's magnetic field. Today, extensive studies are dedicated to the
calibration of the normal-reversal patterns in the oceanic crust on one hand and known
timescales derived from the dating of basalt layers in sedimentary sequences
(magnetostratigraphy) on the other, to arrive at estimates of past spreading rates and plate
reconstructions.

Definition and refining of the theory

After all these considerations, Plate Tectonics (or, as it was initially called "New Global
Tectonics") became quickly accepted in the scientific world, and numerous papers followed that
defined the concepts:

In 1965, Tuzo Wilson who had been a promotor of the sea floor spreading hypothesis and
continental drift from the very beginning[50] added the concept of transform faults to the
model, completing the classes of fault types necessary to make the mobility of the plates
on the globe work out.[51]
A symposium on continental drift was held at the Royal Society of London in 1965
which must be regarded as the official start of the acceptance of plate tectonics by the
scientific community, and which abstracts are issued as Blacket, Bullard & Runcorn
(1965). In this symposium, Edward Bullard and co-workers showed with a computer
calculation how the continents along both sides of the Atlantic would best fit to close the
ocean, which became known as the famous "Bullard's Fit".
In 1966 Wilson published the paper that referred to previous plate tectonic
reconstructions, introducing the concept of what is now known as the "Wilson Cycle".[52]

In 1967, at the American Geophysical Union's meeting, W. Jason Morgan proposed that
the Earth's surface consists of 12 rigid plates that move relative to each other.[53]
Two months later, Xavier Le Pichon published a complete model based on 6 major plates
with their relative motions, which marked the final acceptance by the scientific
community of plate tectonics.[54]
In the same year, McKenzie and Parker independently presented a model similar to
Morgan's using translations and rotations on a sphere to define the plate motions.[55]

Implications for biogeography

Continental drift theory helps biogeographers to explain the disjunct biogeographic distribution
of present day life found on different continents but having similar ancestors.[56] In particular, it
explains the Gondwanan distribution of ratites and the Antarctic flora.

Plate reconstruction
Main article: Plate reconstruction
Reconstruction is used to establish past (and future) plate configurations, helping determine the
shape and make-up of ancient supercontinents and providing a basis for paleogeography.

Defining plate boundaries

Current plate boundaries are defined by their seismicity.[57] Past plate boundaries within existing
plates are identified from a variety of evidence, such as the presence of ophiolites that are
indicative of vanished oceans.[58]

Past plate motions

Tectonic motion first began around three billion years ago.[59][why?]
Various types of quantitative and semi-quantitative information are available to constrain past
plate motions. The geometric fit between continents, such as between west Africa and South
America is still an important part of plate reconstruction. Magnetic stripe patterns provide a
reliable guide to relative plate motions going back into the Jurassic period.[60] The tracks of
hotspots give absolute reconstructions, but these are only available back to the Cretaceous.[61]
Older reconstructions rely mainly on paleomagnetic pole data, although these only constrain the
latitude and rotation, but not the longitude. Combining poles of different ages in a particular
plate to produce apparent polar wander paths provides a method for comparing the motions of
different plates through time.[62] Additional evidence comes from the distribution of certain
sedimentary rock types,[63] faunal provinces shown by particular fossil groups, and the position
of orogenic belts.[61]

Formation and break-up of continents

The movement of plates has caused the formation and break-up of continents over time,
including occasional formation of a supercontinent that contains most or all of the continents.
The supercontinent Columbia or Nuna formed during a period of 2,000 to 1,800 million years
ago and broke up about 1,500 to 1,300 million years ago.[64] The supercontinent Rodinia is
thought to have formed about 1 billion years ago and to have embodied most or all of Earth's
continents, and broken up into eight continents around 600 million years ago. The eight
continents later re-assembled into another supercontinent called Pangaea; Pangaea broke up into
Laurasia (which became North America and Eurasia) and Gondwana (which became the
remaining continents).
The Himalayas, the world's tallest mountain range, are assumed to have been formed by the
collision of two major plates. Before uplift, they were covered by the Tethys Ocean.

Current plates
Main article: List of tectonic plates

Depending on how they are defined, there are usually seven or eight "major" plates: African,
Antarctic, Eurasian, North American, South American, Pacific, and Indo-Australian. The latter is
sometimes subdivided into the Indian and Australian plates.
There are dozens of smaller plates, the seven largest of which are the Arabian, Caribbean, Juan
de Fuca, Cocos, Nazca, Philippine Sea and Scotia.
The current motion of the tectonic plates is today determined by remote sensing satellite data
sets, calibrated with ground station measurements.

Other celestial bodies (planets, moons)

The appearance of plate tectonics on terrestrial planets is related to planetary mass, with more
massive planets than Earth expected to exhibit plate tectonics. Earth may be a borderline case,
owing its tectonic activity to abundant water [65] (silica and water form a deep eutectic.)

Venus
See also: Geology of Venus
Venus shows no evidence of active plate tectonics. There is debatable evidence of active
tectonics in the planet's distant past; however, events taking place since then (such as the
plausible and generally accepted hypothesis that the Venusian lithosphere has thickened greatly
over the course of several hundred million years) has made constraining the course of its
geologic record difficult. However, the numerous well-preserved impact craters have been
utilized as a dating method to approximately date the Venusian surface (since there are thus far
no known samples of Venusian rock to be dated by more reliable methods). Dates derived are
dominantly in the range 500 to 750 million years ago, although ages of up to 1,200 million years
ago have been calculated. This research has led to the fairly well accepted hypothesis that Venus
has undergone an essentially complete volcanic resurfacing at least once in its distant past, with
the last event taking place approximately within the range of estimated surface ages. While the
mechanism of such an impressive thermal event remains a debated issue in Venusian
geosciences, some scientists are advocates of processes involving plate motion to some extent.
One explanation for Venus' lack of plate tectonics is that on Venus temperatures are too high for
significant water to be present.[66][67] The Earth's crust is soaked with water, and water plays an
important role in the development of shear zones. Plate tectonics requires weak surfaces in the
crust along which crustal slices can move, and it may well be that such weakening never took
place on Venus because of the absence of water. However, some researchers remain convinced
that plate tectonics is or was once active on this planet.

Mars
See also: Geology of Mars
Mars is considerably smaller than Earth and Venus, and there is evidence for ice on its surface
and in its crust.
In the 1990s, it was proposed that Martian Crustal Dichotomy was created by plate tectonic
processes.[68] Scientists today disagree, and believe that it was created either by upwelling within
the Martian mantle that thickened the crust of the Southern Highlands and formed Tharsis[69] or
by a giant impact that excavated the Northern Lowlands.[70]
Valles Marineris may be a tectonic boundary.[71]
Observations made of the magnetic field of Mars by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in
1999 showed patterns of magnetic striping discovered on this planet. Some scientists interpreted
these as requiring plate tectonic processes, such as seafloor spreading.[72] However, their data fail

a "magnetic reversal test", which is used to see if they were formed by flipping polarities of a
global magnetic field.[73]

Galilean satellites of Jupiter

Some of the satellites of Jupiter have features that may be related to plate-tectonic style
deformation, although the materials and specific mechanisms may be different from platetectonic activity on Earth. On 8 September 2014, NASA reported finding evidence of plate
tectonics on Europa, a satellite of Jupiter - the first sign of such geological activity on another
world other than Earth.[74]

Titan, moon of Saturn

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was reported to show tectonic activity in images taken by the
Huygens Probe, which landed on Titan on January 14, 2005.[75]

Exoplanets
On Earth-sized planets, plate tectonics is more likely if there are oceans of water; however, in
2007, two independent teams of researchers came to opposing conclusions about the likelihood
of plate tectonics on larger super-earths[76][77] with one team saying that plate tectonics would be
episodic or stagnant[78] and the other team saying that plate tectonics is very likely on superearths even if the planet is dry.[65]

See also

Geological history of Earth

Geosyncline theory
List of plate tectonics topics
Supercontinent cycle
Conservation of angular momentum
List of submarine topographical features
Tectonics

References
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Little, Fowler & Coulson 1990.

Read & Watson 1975.
Scalera & Lavecchia 2006.
Zhen Shao 1997, Hancock, Skinner & Dineley 2000.
Turcotte & Schubert 2002, p. 5.
Turcotte & Schubert 2002.
Turcotte & Schubert 2002, p. 3.

8. Foulger 2010.
9. Schmidt & Harbert 1998.
10. Meissner 2002, p. 100.
11. "Plate Tectonics: Plate Boundaries". platetectonics.com. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
12. "Understanding plate motions". USGS. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
13. Mendia-Landa, Pedro. "Myths and Legends on Natural Disasters: Making Sense of Our
World". Retrieved 2008-02-05.
14. van Dijk 1992, van Dijk & Okkes 1991.
15. Holmes, Arthur (1931). "Radioactivity and Earth Movements". Trans. Geological Society
of Glasgow: 559606.
16. Tanimoto & Lay 2000.
17. Smoot et al. 1996.
18. Spence 1987, White & McKenzie 1989.
19. Conrad & Lithgow-Bertelloni 2002.
20. Spence 1987, White & Mckenzie 1989, Segev 2002.
21. "Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)". University of California Museum of Paleontology.
22. Neith, Katie (April 15, 2011). "Caltech Researchers Use GPS Data to Model Effects of
Tidal Loads on Earth's Surface". Caltech. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
23. van Dijk 1992, van Dijk & Okkes 1990).
24. Moore 1973.
25. Bostrom 1971.
26. Scoppola et al. 2006.
27. Torsvik et al. 2010.
28. Wegener 1929.
29. Hughes 2001a.
30. Wegener 1966, Hughes 2001b.
31. Runcorn 1956.
32. Carey 1956.
33. see for example the milestone paper of Lyman & Fleming 1940.
34. Korgen 1995, Spiess & Kuperman 2003.
35. Kious & Tilling 1996.
36. Frankel 1987.
37. Joly 1909.
38. Thomson 1863.
39. Wegener 1912.
40. Stein & Wysession 2009, p. 26
41. Carey 1956; see also Quilty 2003.
42. Holmes 1928; see also Holmes 1978, Frankel 1978.
43. Lippsett 2001, Lippsett 2006.
44. Heezen 1960.
45. Dietz 1961.
46. Hess 1962.
47. Mason & Raff 1961, Raff & Mason 1961.
48. Vine & Matthews 1963.
49. See summary in Heirzler, Le Pichon & Baron 1966
50. Wilson 1963.

51. Wilson 1965.

52. Wilson 1966.
53. Morgan 1968.
54. Le Pichon 1967.
55. McKenzie & Parker 1967.
56. Moss & Wilson 1998.
57. Condie 1997.
58. Lliboutry 2000.
59. Kranendonk, V.; Martin, J. (2011). "Onset of Plate Tectonics". Science 333 (6041): 413
414. doi:10.1126/science.1208766. PMID 21778389. edit
60. Torsvik, Trond Helge. "Reconstruction Methods". Retrieved 18 June 2010.
61. Torsvik 2008.
62. Butler 1992.
63. Scotese, C.R. (2002-04-20). "Climate History". Paleomap Project. Retrieved 18 June
2010.
64. Zhao 2002, 2004
65. Valencia, O'Connell & Sasselov 2007.
66. Kasting 1988.
67. Bortman, Henry (2004-08-26). "Was Venus alive? "The Signs are Probably There"".
Astrobiology Magazine. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
68. Sleep 1994.
69. Zhong & Zuber 2001.
70. Andrews-Hanna, Zuber & Banerdt 2008.
71. Wolpert, Stuart (August 9, 2012). "UCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars".
Yin, An. UCLA. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
72. Connerney et al. 1999, Connerney et al. 2005
73. Harrison 2000.
74. Dyches, Preston; Brown, Dwayne; Buckley, Michael (8 September 2014). "Scientists
Find Evidence of 'Diving' Tectonic Plates on Europa". NASA. Retrieved 8 September
2014.
75. Soderblom et al. 2007.
76. Convection scaling and subduction on Earth and super-Earths, Diana Valencia, Richard J.
O'Connell, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 286, Issues 34, 15 September
2009, Pages 492502, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2009.07.015,
77. Plate tectonics on super-Earths: Equally or more likely than on Earth,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2011.07.029, Earth and Planetary Science Letters,
Volume 310, Issues 34, 15 October 2011, Pages 252261, H.J. van Heck, P.J. Tackley
78. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L19204, 4 PP., 2007,
doi:10.1029/2007GL030598, Geological consequences of super-sized Earths, C. O'Neill,
A. Lenardic

Cited books

Butler, Robert F. (1992). "Applications to paleogeography". Paleomagnetism: Magnetic

domains to geologic terranes. Blackwell. ISBN 0-86542-070-X. Retrieved 18 June 2010.

Carey, S. W. (1958). "The tectonic approach to continental drift". In Carey, S.W.

Continental DriftA symposium, held in March 1956. Hobart: Univ. of Tasmania.
pp. 177363. Expanding Earth from p. 311 to p. 349.
Condie, K.C. (1997). Plate tectonics and crustal evolution (4th ed.). ButterworthHeinemann. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-7506-3386-4. Retrieved 2010-06-18.
Foulger, Gillian R. (2010). "Plates vs Plumes: A Geological Controversy.". WileyBlackwell, 364 pp. ISBN 978-1-4051-6148-0.
Frankel, H. (1987). "The Continental Drift Debate". In H.T. Engelhardt Jr and A.L.
Caplan. Scientific Controversies: Case Solutions in the resolution and closure of disputes
in science and technology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27560-6.
Hancock, Paul L.; Skinner, Brian J.; Dineley, David L. (2000). The Oxford Companion to
The Earth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854039-6.
Hess, H. H. (November 1962). "History of Ocean Basins". In A. E. J. Engel, Harold L.
James, and B. F. Leonard. Petrologic studies: a volume to honor of A. F. Buddington.
Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. pp. 599620.
Holmes, Arthur (1978). Principles of Physical Geology (3 ed.). Wiley. pp. 640641.
ISBN 0-471-07251-6.
Joly, John (1909). Radioactivity and Geology: An Account of the Influence of Radioactive
Energy on Terrestrial History. London: Archibald Constable. p. 36. ISBN 1-4021-35777.
Kious, W. Jacquelyne; Tilling, Robert I. (February 2001) [1996]. "Historical
perspective". This Dynamic Earth: the Story of Plate Tectonics (Online ed.). U.S.
Geological Survey. ISBN 0-16-048220-8. Retrieved 2008-01-29. Abraham Ortelius in his
work Thesaurus Geographicus... suggested that the Americas were 'torn away from
Europe and Africa... by earthquakes and floods... The vestiges of the rupture reveal
themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the
coasts of the three [continents].'
Lippsett, Laurence (2006). "Maurice Ewing and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory".
In William Theodore De Bary, Jerry Kisslinger and Tom Mathewson. Living Legacies at
Columbia. Columbia University Press. pp. 277297. ISBN 0-231-13884-9. Retrieved
2010-06-22.
Little, W.; Fowler, H.W.; Coulson, J. (1990). Onions C.T., ed. The Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary: on historical principles II (3 ed.). Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19861126-4.
Lliboutry, L. (2000). Quantitative geophysics and geology. Springer. p. 480. ISBN 978-185233-115-3. Retrieved 2010-06-18.
McKnight, Tom (2004). Geographica: The complete illustrated Atlas of the world. New
York: Barnes and Noble Books. ISBN 0-7607-5974-X.* Meissner, Rolf (2002). The
Little Book of Planet Earth. New York: Copernicus Books. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-38795258-1.
Moss, S.J.; Wilson, M.E.J. (1998). "Biogeographic implications from the Tertiary
palaeogeographic evolution of Sulawesi and Borneo". In Hall R, Holloway JD (eds).
Biogeography and Geological Evolution of SE Asia (PDF). Leiden, The Netherlands:
Backhuys. pp. 133163. ISBN 90-73348-97-8. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
Oreskes, Naomi, ed. (2003). Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory
of the Earth. Westview. ISBN 0-8133-4132-9.

Read, Herbert Harold; Watson, Janet (1975). Introduction to Geology. New York:
Halsted. pp. 1315. ISBN 978-0-470-71165-1. OCLC 317775677.
Schmidt, Victor A.; Harbert, William (1998). "The Living Machine: Plate Tectonics".
Planet Earth and the New Geosciences (3 ed.). p. 442. ISBN 0-7872-4296-9. Retrieved
2008-01-28.
Schubert, Gerald; Turcotte, Donald L.; Olson, Peter (2001). Mantle Convection in the
Earth and Planets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-35367-X.
Smoot, N. Christian; Choi, Dong R.; Meyerhoff, Arthur Augustus; Bhat, Mohammad I.;
Morris, A. E. L.; Agocs, W. B.; Kamen-Kaye, M.; Taner, I. (1996). Surge tectonics: a
new hypothesis of global geodynamics. Solid-State Science and Technology Library.
Springer Netherlands. p. 348. ISBN 978-0-7923-4156-7. |first9= missing |last9= in
Authors list (help)
Stanley, Steven M. (1999). Earth System History. W.H. Freeman. pp. 211228. ISBN 07167-2882-6.
Sverdrup, H. U., Johnson, M. W. and Fleming, R. H. (1942). The Oceans: Their physics,
chemistry and general biology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. p. 1087.
Thompson, Graham R. and Turk, Jonathan (1991). Modern Physical Geology. Saunders
College Publishing. ISBN 0-03-025398-5.
Torsvik, Trond Helge; Steinberger, Bernhard (December 2006). "Fra kontinentaldrift til
manteldynamikk" [From Continental Drift to Mantle Dynamics]. Geo (in norwegian) 8:
2030. Retrieved 22 June 2010., translation: Torsvik, Trond Helge; Steinberger,
Bernhard (2008). "From Continental Drift to Mantle Dynamics". In Trond Slagstad and
Rolv Dahl Grsteinen. Geology for Society for 150 years - The Legacy after Kjerulf 12.
Trondheim: Norges Geologiske Undersokelse. pp. 2438. Retrieved 18 June
2010 [Norwegian Geological Survey, Popular Science].
Turcotte, D.L.; Schubert, G. (2002). "Plate Tectonics". Geodynamics (2 ed.). Cambridge
University Press. pp. 121. ISBN 0-521-66186-2.
Wegener, Alfred (1929). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (4 ed.).
Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Akt. Ges. ISBN 3-443-01056-3.
Wegener, Alfred (1966). The origin of continents and oceans. Biram John (translator).
Courier Dover. p. 246. ISBN 0-486-61708-4.
Winchester, Simon (2003). Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883.
HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-621285-5.
Stein, Seth; Wysession, Michael (2009). An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes,
and Earth Structure. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-1131-0.

Cited articles

Andrews-Hanna, Jeffrey C.; Zuber, Maria T.; Banerdt, W. Bruce (2008). "The Borealis
basin and the origin of the martian crustal dichotomy". Nature 453 (7199): 12125.
Bibcode:2008Natur.453.1212A. doi:10.1038/nature07011. PMID 18580944.
Blacket, P.M.S.; Bullard, E.; Runcorn, S.K., eds. (1965). A Symposium on Continental
Drift, held in 28 October 1965. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 258
(1088). The Royal Society of London. p. 323.
Bostrom, R.C. (31 December 1971). "Westward displacement of the lithosphere". Nature
234 (5331): 536538. Bibcode:1971Natur.234..536B. doi:10.1038/234536a0.

Connerney, J.E.P.; Acua, M.H.; Wasilewski, P.J.; Ness, N.F.; Rme H., Mazelle C.,
Vignes D., Lin R.P., Mitchell D.L., Cloutier P.A. (1999). "Magnetic Lineations in the
Ancient Crust of Mars". Science 284 (5415): 794798. Bibcode:1999Sci...284..794C.
doi:10.1126/science.284.5415.794. PMID 10221909.
Connerney, J.E.P.; Acua, M.H.; Ness, N.F.; Kletetschka, G.; Mitchell D.L., Lin R.P.,
Rme H. (2005). "Tectonic implications of Mars crustal magnetism". Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 102 (42): 1497014975. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10214970C.
doi:10.1073/pnas.0507469102. PMC 1250232. PMID 16217034.
Conrad, Clinton P.; Lithgow-Bertelloni, Carolina (2002). "How Mantle Slabs Drive Plate
Tectonics". Science 298 (5591): 2079. Bibcode:2002Sci...298..207C.
doi:10.1126/science.1074161. PMID 12364804.
Dietz, Robert S. (June 1961). "Continent and Ocean Basin Evolution by Spreading of the
Sea Floor". Nature 190 (4779): 854857. Bibcode:1961Natur.190..854D.
doi:10.1038/190854a0.
van Dijk, Janpieter; Okkes, F.W. Mark (1990). "The analysis of shear zones in Calabria;
implications for the geodynamics of the Central Mediterranean". Rivista Italiana di
Paleontologia e Stratigrafia 96 (23): 241270.
van Dijk, J.P.; Okkes, F.W.M. (1991). "Neogene tectonostratigraphy and kinematics of
Calabrian Basins: implications for the geodynamics of the Central Mediterranean".
Tectonophysics 196: 2360. Bibcode:1991Tectp.196...23V. doi:10.1016/00401951(91)90288-4.
van Dijk, Janpieter (1992). "Late Neogene fore-arc basin evolution in the Calabrian Arc
(Central Mediterranean). Tectonic sequence stratigraphy and dynamic geohistory. With
special reference to the geology of Central Calabria". Geologica Ultrajectina 92: 288.
Frankel, Henry (July 1978). "Arthur Holmes and continental drift". The British Journal
for the History of Science 11 (2): 130150. doi:10.1017/S0007087400016551.
JSTOR 4025726.
Harrison, C.G.A. (2000). "Questions About Magnetic Lineations in the Ancient Crust of
Mars". Science 287 (5453): 547a. doi:10.1126/science.287.5453.547a.
Heezen, B. (1960). "The rift in the ocean floor". Scientific American 203 (4): 98110.
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1060-98.
Heirtzler, James R.; Le Pichon, Xavier; Baron, J. Gregory (1966). "Magnetic anomalies
over the Reykjanes Ridge". Deep Sea Research 13 (3): 427432.
Bibcode:1966DSROA..13..427H. doi:10.1016/0011-7471(66)91078-3.
Holmes, Arthur (1928). "Radioactivity and Earth movements". Transactions of the
Geological Society of Glasgow 18: 559606.
Hughes, Patrick (8 February 2001). "Alfred Wegener (1880-1930): A Geographic Jigsaw
Puzzle". On the shoulders of giants. Earth Observatory, NASA. Retrieved 2007-12-26. ...
on January 6, 1912, Wegener... proposed instead a grand vision of drifting continents and
widening seas to explain the evolution of Earth's geography.
Hughes, Patrick (8 February 2001). "Alfred Wegener (1880-1930): The origin of
continents and oceans". On the Shoulders of Giants. Earth Observatory, NASA.
Retrieved 2007-12-26. By his third edition (1922), Wegener was citing geological
evidence that some 300 million years ago all the continents had been joined in a
supercontinent stretching from pole to pole. He called it Pangaea (all lands),...

Kasting, James F. (1988). "Runaway and moist greenhouse atmospheres and the
evolution of Earth and Venus". Icarus 74 (3): 472494. Bibcode:1988Icar...74..472K.
doi:10.1016/0019-1035(88)90116-9. PMID 11538226.
Korgen, Ben J. (1995). "A voice from the past: John Lyman and the plate tectonics story"
(PDF). Oceanography (The Oceanography Society) 8 (1): 1920.
doi:10.5670/oceanog.1995.29.
Lippsett, Laurence (2001). "Maurice Ewing and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory".
Living Legacies. Retrieved 2008-03-04.
Lovett, Richard A (24 January 2006). "Moon Is Dragging Continents West, Scientist
Says". National Geographic News.
Lyman, J.; Fleming, R.H. (1940). "Composition of Seawater". Journal of Marine
Research 3: 134146.
Mason, Ronald G.; Raff, Arthur D. (1961). "Magnetic survey off the west coast of the
United States between 32N latitude and 42N latitude". Bulletin of the Geological
Society of America 72 (8): 12591266. Bibcode:1961GSAB...72.1259M.
doi:10.1130/0016-7606(1961)72[1259:MSOTWC]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0016-7606.
Mc Kenzie, D.; Parker, R.L. (1967). "The North Pacific: an example of tectonics on a
sphere". Nature 216 (5122): 12761280. Bibcode:1967Natur.216.1276M.
doi:10.1038/2161276a0.
Moore, George W. (1973). "Westward Tidal Lag as the Driving Force of Plate
Tectonics". Geology 1 (3): 99100. Bibcode:1973Geo.....1...99M. doi:10.1130/00917613(1973)1<99:WTLATD>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0091-7613.
Morgan, W. Jason (1968). "Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, and Crustal Blocks". Journal
of Geophysical Research 73 (6): 19591982. Bibcode:1968JGR....73.1959M.
doi:10.1029/JB073i006p01959.
Le Pichon, Xavier (15 June 1968). "Sea-floor spreading and continental drift". Journal of
Geophysical Research 73 (12): 36613697. Bibcode:1968JGR....73.3661L.
doi:10.1029/JB073i012p03661.
Quilty, Patrick G.; Banks, Maxwell R. (2003). "Samuel Warren Carey, 1911-2002".
Biographical memoirs. Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 2010-06-19. This
memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science (2003) 14
(3).
Raff, Arthur D.; Mason, Roland G. (1961). "Magnetic survey off the west coast of the
United States between 40N latitude and 52N latitude". Bulletin of the Geological
Society of America 72 (8): 12671270. Bibcode:1961GSAB...72.1267R.
doi:10.1130/0016-7606(1961)72[1267:MSOTWC]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0016-7606.
Runcorn, S.K. (1956). "Paleomagnetic comparisons between Europe and North
America". Proceedings, Geological Association of Canada 8: 7785.
Scalera, G., and Lavecchia, G. (2006). "Frontiers in earth sciences: new ideas and
interpretation". Annals of Geophysics 49 (1). doi:10.4401/ag-4406.
Scoppola, B.; Boccaletti, D.; Bevis, M.; Carminati, E.; Doglioni, C. (2006). "The
westward drift of the lithosphere: A rotational drag?". Geological Society of America
Bulletin 118: 199209. Bibcode:2006GSAB..118..199S. doi:10.1130/B25734.1.
Segev, A (2002). "Flood basalts, continental breakup and the dispersal of Gondwana:
evidence for periodic migration of upwelling mantle flows (plumes)". EGU Stephan

Mueller Special Publication Series 2: 171191. doi:10.5194/smsps-2-171-2002.

Retrieved 5 August 2010.
Sleep, Norman H. (1994). "Martian plate tectonics". Journal of Geophysical Research
99: 5639. Bibcode:1994JGR....99.5639S. doi:10.1029/94JE00216.
Soderblom, Laurence A.; Tomasko, Martin G.; Archinal, Brent A.; Becker, Tammy; L.
Bushroe, Michael W.; Cook, Debbie A.; Doose, Lyn R.; Galuszka, Donna M.; Hare,
Trent M.; Howington-Kraus, Elpitha; Karkoschka, Erich; Kirk, Randolph L.; Lunine,
Jonathan I.; McFarlane, Elisabeth A.; Redding, Bonnie L.; Rizk, Bashar; Rosiek, Mark
R.; See, Charles; Smith, Peter H. (2007). "Topography and geomorphology of the
Huygens landing site on Titan". Planetary and Space Science 55 (13): 20152024.
Bibcode:2007P&SS...55.2015S. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2007.04.015.
Spence, William (1987). ref=CITEREFSpence1987 "Slab pull and the seismotectonics of
subducting lithosphere". Reviews of Geophysics 25 (1): 5569.
Bibcode:1987RvGeo..25...55S. doi:10.1029/RG025i001p00055.
Spiess, Fred; Kuperman, William (2003). "The Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps"
(PDF). Oceanography (The Oceanography Society) 16 (3): 4554.
doi:10.5670/oceanog.2003.30.
Tanimoto, Toshiro; Lay, Thorne (7 November 2000). "Mantle dynamics and seismic
tomography". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (23): 1240912410.
Bibcode:2000PNAS...9712409T. doi:10.1073/pnas.210382197. PMC 34063.
PMID 11035784.
Thomson, W (1863). "On the secular cooling of the earth". Philosophical Magazine 4
(25): 114. doi:10.1080/14786446308643410 (inactive 2010-06-22).
Torsvik, Trond H.; Steinberger, Bernhard; Gurnis, Michael; Gaina, Carmen (2010).
"Plate tectonics and net lithosphere rotation over the past 150 My". Earth and Planetary
Science Letters 291: 106112. Bibcode:2010E&PSL.291..106T.
doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2009.12.055. Retrieved 18 June 2010.
Valencia, Diana; O'Connell, Richard J.; Sasselov, Dimitar D (November 2007).
"Inevitability of Plate Tectonics on Super-Earths". Astrophysical Journal Letters 670 (1):
L45L48. arXiv:0710.0699. Bibcode:2007ApJ...670L..45V. doi:10.1086/524012.
Vine, F.J.; Matthews, D.H. (1963). "Magnetic anomalies over oceanic ridges". Nature
199 (4897): 947949. Bibcode:1963Natur.199..947V. doi:10.1038/199947a0.
Wegener, Alfred (6 January 1912). "Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde
(Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage". Petermanns Geographische
Mitteilungen 63: 185195, 253256, 305309.
White, R.; McKenzie, D. (1989). "Magmatism at rift zones: The generation of volcanic
continental margins and flood basalts". Journal of Geophysical Research 94: 76857729.
Bibcode:1989JGR....94.7685W. doi:10.1029/JB094iB06p07685.
Wilson, J.T. (8 June 1963). "Hypothesis on the Earth's behaviour". Nature 198 (4884):
849865. Bibcode:1963Natur.198..925T. doi:10.1038/198925a0.
Wilson, J. Tuzo (July 1965). "A new class of faults and their bearing on continental
drift". Nature 207 (4995): 343347. Bibcode:1965Natur.207..343W.
doi:10.1038/207343a0.
Wilson, J. Tuzo (13 August 1966). "Did the Atlantic close and then re-open?". Nature
211 (5050): 676681. Bibcode:1966Natur.211..676W. doi:10.1038/211676a0.
Zhen Shao, Huang (1997). "Speed of the Continental Plates". The Physics Factbook.

Zhao, Guochun, Cawood, Peter A., Wilde, Simon A., and Sun, M. (2002). "Review of
global 2.11.8 Ga orogens: implications for a pre-Rodinia supercontinent". Earth-Science
Reviews 59, pp. 125162.
Zhao, Guochun, Sun, M., Wilde, Simon A., and Li, S.Z. (2004). "A PaleoMesoproterozoic supercontinent: assembly, growth and breakup". Earth-Science
Reviews, 67, pp. 91123.
Zhong, Shijie; Zuber, Maria T. (2001). "Degree-1 mantle convection and the crustal
dichotomy on Mars". Earth and Planetary Science Letters 189: 75.
Bibcode:2001E&PSL.189...75Z. doi:10.1016/S0012-821X(01)00345-4.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plate tectonics.

This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics. USGS.

Understanding Plate Tectonics. USGS.
The PLATES Project. Jackson School of Geosciences.
An explanation of tectonic forces. Example of calculations to show that Earth Rotation
could be a driving force.
Bird, P. (2003); An updated digital model of plate boundaries.
Map of tectonic plates.
GPlates, desktop software for the interactive visualization of plate-tectonics.
MORVEL plate velocity estimates and information. C. DeMets, D. Argus, & R. Gordon.
Google Map of the Topography of Plate Tectonics that enables you to zoom in on
submarine mid ocean ridges, fracture zones, ocean trenches, thermal vents and submarine
volcanoes.

Videos

Khan Academy Explanation of evidence

750 million years of global tectonic activity. Movie.

[show]

v
t
e

The Earth
[show]

t
e

Tectonic plates (list)

[show]

v
t
e

Structure of the Earth

[show]

v
t
e

Geologic principles and processses

[show]

v
t
e

Elements of nature
Categories:

Plate tectonics
Geology theories
Seismology
Geodynamics

Navigation menu

Create account
Log in

Article
Talk

Read
View source

View history

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikimedia Shop

Interaction

Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page

Tools

What links here

Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page

Print/export

Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version

Languages

Afrikaans
Alemannisch

Aragons
Azrbaycanca

Basa Banyumasan

Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Catal
etina
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti

Espaol
Esperanto
Euskara

Fiji Hindi
Franais
Gaeilge
Galego

Hrvatski
Bahasa Indonesia
slenska
Italiano

Basa Jawa

Kiswahili
Kreyl ayisyen
Latina
Latvieu
Lietuvi
Magyar

Bahasa Melayu

Nederlands

Norsk bokml
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
Oromoo

Ozbekcha

Plattdtsch
Polski
Portugus
Romn
Rumantsch

Scots
Simple English
Slovenina
Slovenina

/ srpski
Srpskohrvatski /
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog

Trke

Vahcuengh
Ting Vit
West-Vlams
Winaray

Edit links

This page was last modified on 20 December 2014 at 16:02.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy
Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization.

Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view