Plate Tectonics Vocab

2. the theory that the Earth’s surface is made up of giant, moving slabs of lithosphere, made of both oceanic and continental slabs.
6. a plate boundary in which plates move past one another in opposite directions.
7. the study of changes in Earth's magnetic field, as shown by patterns of magnetism in rocks that have formed over time
10. when a plate slides under another plate as it more dense than the plate above, occurs at convergent boundaries.
12. the process by which new oceanic crust forms as magma rises towards the surface and solidifies, occur at mid-ocean ridges.
13. a valley created at a divergent boundary where plates are spreading apart.

1. a plate boundary in which plates move towards one another.
3. deep underwater depressions created by one plate subducting under another plate at a convergent plate boundary.
4. a single land mass, or supercontinent, that existed from about 350 to 200 million years ago.
5. An area far from a plate boundary in which magma rises from deep within Earth through the lithosphere to reach the ocean floor.
8. a plate boundary in which plates move away from one another.
9. an undersea mountain chain where new ocean floor is produced at a divergent plate boundary, also includes underwater volcanoes.
11. the idea that continents were once joined in a single landmass that eventually broke apart into pieces that slowly moved away from each other