Why are tectonic plates like a jigsaw puzzle?
Driven by circulation in the underlying mantle, the plates slid past each other, pulled apart, or collided. The jigsaw didn’t fit quite the way it does now, but the pieces were already moving around.
How is plate tectonics like a puzzle?
The Earth’s crust is not a solid shell. It is made up of thick, interconnecting pieces called tectonic plates that fit together like a puzzle. They move atop the underly- ing mantle, a really thick layer of hot flowing rock.
What is tectonic jigsaw?
The kinaesthetic task helps students to grasp the location of the different tectonic plates. The simple jigsaw is a hands-on activity and is ideal for KS3 or as a revision or starter activity for KS4.
Why does the earth look like a puzzle?
Fossils can help us piece together what the tectonic plate jigsaw looked like in the past. The plate’s movements are driven by convection currents in the Earth’s mantle, which push and pull the plates around. The interactions between the plates shape the Earth’s surface, creating oceans, mountains and islands.
What two continents fit together like a puzzle?
The east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa seem to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and Wegener discovered their rock layers “fit” just as clearly.
Did the continents easily fit together like a puzzle explain?
The theory that explains this process is called plate tectonics. The theory of continental drift simply stated that continents drifted from one location to another over time. Wegener noticed that the coasts of South America and Africa seemed to fit together like a puzzle.
What are 3 pieces of evidence for Pangea?
Alfred Wegener, in the first three decades of this century, and DuToit in the 1920s and 1930s gathered evidence that the continents had moved. They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
What is the evidence of Pangea?
The rock formations of eastern North America, Western Europe, and northwestern Africa were later found to have a common origin, and they overlapped in time with the presence of Gondwanaland. Together, these discoveries supported the existence of Pangea.