did you know thousands of years ago the earth's continents where all one piece? they were called "Plate Tectonics"
2007-04-03 16:33:16 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
Yes. Even my second graders know that. Do you know why they moved apart?
2007-04-03 16:53:47 · answer #1 · answered by greenfrogs 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Pangaea was the super continent that existed when all the above water peices of the crust were together. Plate Tectonics is the thoery that describes how they moved away form eachother due to continental drift, earthquakes, and the like...
2007-04-04 14:54:47 · answer #2 · answered by glazeddonut27 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Pangaea was once a big continent. We all knew that already, after millions of years passed, there were some changes of the earth has made like the movement of the continents or more likely an earthquake explosion of the volcanoes and many more.
2007-04-04 01:17:16 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually I think the earth's crust started off as lots of cooling pieces of crust back in the Archean Era when the earth was still really hot (thousands of degrees Fahrenheit type of hot). As the earth cooled, crust developed. Once the crust was completely cooled the pieces all melded together to form "Pangaea". Pangaea then broke up into two pieces called Laurasia and Godwanaland. Those two pieces then broke up into mostly all the continents we know of now. They were different at first though - what we know of the earth now is a result of the early continents crashing together (mountains) and splitting apart (ocean trenches).
2007-04-03 23:46:29 · answer #4 · answered by Your Best Friend 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
keep reading, pangaea was the huge continent that came apart when the plates of the earths crust moved to where they are now. they are still moving and this is what cause earthquakes , volcanoes, mountains, rift-valleys and fault lines. the theory of all of this is called plate tectonics.
and it was a lot longer ago than "thousands" of years
2007-04-03 23:44:00 · answer #5 · answered by Bio-student Again(aka nursegirl) 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
'They were called "Plate Tectonics"', is incorrect. The Theory of Plate Tectonics describes thin crustal plates moving about due to convection currents in the mantle. Also, the time frame is hundreds of millions of years ago, not thousands of years ago. There have been at several supercontinent assemblages, Pangaea (about 300 million years ago) and Rodinia (about 750 million years ago), Columbia (about 1700 milion years ago), Kenorland (about 2700 million years ago) and Vaalbara (3100 million years ago) The Wilson Cycle describes the process of building up supercontinents and then breaking them down again.
2007-04-04 11:24:53 · answer #6 · answered by Amphibolite 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Hi. Actually Pangaea was a temporary solid sheet of mantle that broke up into the plates, I believe.
2007-04-03 23:38:24 · answer #7 · answered by Cirric 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋