Continental Drift lesson

Open Ended

In Science, what is a scientific theory?

Multiple Choice

What is this a picture of?

• plate tectonics

• continental drift

• pangaea

• glacier scaring

• About 200 million years ago Pangea started to break a part.

• 18o million years- Pangea is now Gondwanaland and Laurasia.

• 65 million years - Most major continentes have move apart.

• Present - the continents reach modern positions.

Broken Lands

Multiple Choice

The theory of continental drift named a key part of this idea Pangaea. What is Pangaea?

• One of the ancient animals that helped Wegener prove that fossils from different continents originally came from the same location
•  supercontinent that existed in Earth's distant past
• The underwater ocean range in the middle of the ocean
• The hot spot which gave rise to the Hawaiian Islands, among others

Multiple Choice

What do you call the evidence of Wegener's Theory that tells about the remains of an organism that lived long time ago?

• Ashes
• Bones
• Follicles
• Fossils

Multiple Choice

The German scientist who first proposed the Theory of Continental Drift 100 years ago?

• Harry Hess
• Penny Pangea
• Alfred Wegener
• Gary Gondwana

Multiple Choice

The east coast of South America seems to fit into the wet coast of Africa, this evidence for Continental Drift is called...

• fit/shape of continents
• fossil evidence
• geological evidence

  (rock evidence)

• climate evidence

Multiple Choice

Glossopteris grew in warm, wet, swampy areas proving Antarctica used to have a ________________climate.

• warm and wet
• hot and dry
• cold and icy
• temperate

• In the 1950’s the sea floor was mapped, was not flat and smooth

• Mid-Ocean Ridges were found

  • Underwater mountain ranges

  • Circle the earth like stitches on a baseball.

Sea floor and Pangea

• Ridges formed on cracks in the crust

• Molten rock (magma) rises through the cracks, and cools.

• New oceanic crust is made.

• Sea floor slowly spreads.

• These areas are called “Spreading Centers”

Sea Floor spreading

Multiple Choice

Wegner used the following as pieces of evidence...

• fit/shape of continents

• geological (rock) and fossil

• climate

• all answers are evidence pieces.

Open Ended

Type one piece of evidence that proves the Continental Drift Theory.