Asthenosphere: a layer of ‘plastic’ semi-solid rock in the lower mantle.
Continental drift: the separating of continents by drifting across the oceans.
Magnetic striping: patterns of magnetism trapped in rocks on each side of plate boundaries.
Ocean trench: a deep trench in the ocean floor that is much deeper than the rest of the ocean floor.
Plate tectonics: the theory that the Earth’s crust is cracked into many large pieces that move on the asthenosphere.
Rifting: the process of continents breaking up, subsiding and allowing in the sea.
Seafloor spreading: the process of new crust forming at the ocean ridges and spreading outwards.
Subduction: where the crust is sinking down into the Earth.
Alfred Wegener proposed the theory that all of Earth’s continents were once connected, which he called Pangaea. His reasoning behind this was that all the continents fit together like a jigsaw and that he also had proof of dead organisms on different continents that had no way of being where they were unless the continents were once one and that when they drifted apart, the fossils were separated. …show more content…
He believed that something caused the continents to be separated and that they were able to move.
The theory that the continents were once joined was based on the fact that the continents could be arranged to fit like a puzzle. Wegener also had proof that dead organisms that had no way of crossing oceans, could be found on the edges of two different continents and this proves that the fossils of these organisms would have been carried with the continents when they were