Download What’s Shakin? - Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic

What’s Shakin’?
What Causes Earthquakes?
What’s different about these two maps?
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mapsharing.org
What could have happened to make
these differences?
Theory:
Continents were once joined but broke apart and
moved slowly to their present locations.
“Continental Drift”
Evidence:
•Fossil Evidence
•Fossils of identical organisms found on
different continents
•Rock Formation
•Mountain Ranges on different continents
made of same types of rock
Alfred Wegner first proposed this idea as a
hypothesis.
•He called the large landmass Pangaea
•Means “all lands” in Greek
•The continents are made of two different
layers:
•The continental crust
•The top layer
•The continental plate
•The bottom layer
•Scientists have discovered that deep below the ocean there
are land masses too.
•They look like mountain ranges
•The top layer is called the oceanic crust
•The bottom layer is called the oceanic plate
•There are deep trenches or
cracks in the ocean mountain
ranges.
•Hot magma from the center of
the earth comes up through the
cracks and cools causing the
ocean floor to spread and the
oceanic plates move.
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What causes the continental plates to move?
•Energy from the earth’s core causes the oceanic
and continental plates to move
•They move on an average of 10cm a year
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What happens when the plates come in contact
with one another?
•Transform
•Plates sliding past one another
•Earthquakes
•Diverge
•Plates separate
•Volcanoes
•Converge
•Plates collide
•Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Where are the major plates located?
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