I NEED SOMEONE TO WRITE AN ANSWER!! NOT OFF THE WEB!! 100 POINTS!!! The theory of plate tectonics is a relatively new idea, deve
loped in the mid-20th century following the discovery of tectonic features on sea-floors. Can you imagine our explanation of faults, earthquakes, mountains, and rifting before the plate tectonic revolution?
Answer: Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into several plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core. The plates act like a hard and rigid shell compared to Earth's mantle.
Explanation:
Plates interact at three types of plate boundaries: divergent, convergent and transform. Most of the Earth's geologic activity takes place at plate boundaries.
Plate tectonics has revolutionized virtually every discipline of the Earth sciences since the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has served as a unifying model or paradigm for explaining geologic phenomena that were formerly considered in unrelated fashion. Plate tectonics describes seismic activity, volcanism, mountain building, and various other Earth processes in terms of the structure and mechanical behaviour of a small number of enormous rigid plates thought to constitute the outer part of the planet (i.e., the lithosphere). This all-encompassing theory grew out of observations and ideas about continental drift and seafloor spreading.
In 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed that throughout most of geologic time there was only one continental mass, which he named Pangaea. At some time during the Mesozoic Era, Pangaea fragmented and the parts began to drift apart. Westward drift of the Americas opened the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian block drifted across the Equator to join with Asia. In 1937 the South African Alexander Du Toit modified Wegener’s hypothesis by suggesting the existence of two primordial continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwanaland in the south. Aside from the congruency of continental shelf margins across the Atlantic, proponents of continental drift have amassed impressive geologic evidence to support their views. Similarities in fossil terrestrial organisms in pre-Cretaceous (older than about 146 million years) strata of Africa and South America and in pre-Jurassic rocks (older than about 200 million years) of
