Inside Earth:
Chapter 1: Plate Tectonics
Section 3: Drifting Continents
Vocabulary:
Pangaea: The name of the single landmass that broke apart 200 million years ago, which now
make up our seven continents
Continental Drift: the belief that the continents slowly move across Earth’s surface (due to
convection currents in the mantle)
Fossil: traces of ancient organisms that has been preserved in rock
Important Facts:
 Early Theories:
o 1620: Sir Francis Bacon
 believed the continents fit together like a puzzle
 Mountain ranges lined up on various continents
 Identical fossils of plants and animals on different continents
 Glacier scratches found on different continents
o Alfred Wegner
 believed that all the continents were once joined
 Theory of continental drift
 Super-continent of Pangaea
 Fossils
 Mountain ranges
 Ice covered continents showed fossils that prove that it was once in a
tropical climate
 **Wegner could not provide an explanation for the force that pushes or
pulls the continents so his theory was not considered correct