ESS205H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Seafloor Spreading, Himalayas, Play-Doh
Document Summary
Plate tectonics is the backbone of geology but they didn"t discover it until the 1960s. Tuzo wilson, man who figured it out from u of t, he actually set out to disprove it. 3 ways of moving: move apart, come together, slide alongside one another. Alfred wegener: german meteorologist, talked about pangea. Rocks are the same in different places, same as the mountain ranges and fossils. Believed that continents fit perfectly and therefore they used to be connected: travelled in the southern hemisphere a lot, volcanoes not distributed randomly, there are patterns to it. Pacific is surrounded by volcanoes but the atlantic was not: mountain belts located in certain places but not others along the coast of north and south america, Where india collides with asia: earthquakes. Many earthquakes along the edges of the pacific ocean: all of these elements were marking out the edges of what we call tectonic plates; certainly not randomly distributed, atlantic ocean a young ocean.
