The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent, where plates move into one another; divergent, where plates move apart; and transform, where plates move sideways in relation to each other. They move at a rate of one to two inches (three to five centimeters) per year.

Tectonic processes mostly take place at the plate edges. A plate moves as a single entity along the surface of the Earth over a plastic mantle. Oceanic plates form at the mid-ocean ridges. They thicken as they move away (at about 1 km for every million years) and have a basaltic composition.

Geologists have hypothesized that the movement of tectonic plates is related to convection currents in the earth’s mantle. Tremendous heat and pressure within the earth cause the hot magma to flow in convection currents. These currents cause the movement of the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s crust.

Somehow, this energy must be transferred to the lithosphere for tectonic plates to move. There are essentially two main types of forces that are thought to influence plate motion: friction and gravity.

The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.

When the plates move they collide or spread apart allowing the very hot molten material called lava to escape from the mantle. When collisions occur they produce mountains, deep underwater valleys called trenches, and volcanoes. The Earth is producing “new” crust where two plates are diverging or spreading apart.

If all plate motion stopped, Earth would be a very different place. Erosion would continue to wear the mountains down, but with no tectonic activity to refresh them, over a few million years they would erode down to low rolling hills.

Without plate tectonics, Earth would not have its diverse geography, which provides a wide range of habitats. Plate tectonics is also responsible for hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

Tectonic plates is one of those pesky vocabulary terms that slides everyone back to their eighth grade science class. The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet in Thingvellir, where they’re visible to visitors walking through the Thingvellir National Park.

A tectonic plate (also called lithospheric plate) is a massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere. Like icebergs, only the tips of which are visible above water, continents have deep “roots” to support their elevations.

There are four types of boundaries between tectonic plates that are defined by the movement of the plates: divergent and convergent boundaries, transform fault boundaries, and plate boundary zones.

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Plates are on average 125km thick, reaching maximum thickness below mountain ranges. Oceanic plates (50-100km) are thinner than the continental plates (up to 200km) and even thinner at the ocean ridges where the temperatures are higher.

lithosphere

Identification of the oldest preserved pieces of Earth’s crust in southern Greenland has provided evidence of active plate tectonics as early as 3.8 billion years ago, according to a report by an international team of geoscientists in Science magazine.

3.2 billion years ago

around 3 billion years ago

So far, Earth is the only planet known to have plate tectonics, where the crust is divided into pieces (plates) which float on top of the mantle, although there is now some evidence that Jupiter’s moon Europa does as well.

The movement of Earth’s tectonic plates shape the planet’s surface. For example, sections of Earth’s crust can come together and collide (a “convergent” plate boundary), spread apart (a “divergent” plate boundary), or slide past one another (a “transform” plate boundary).

Between 60 million years ago and 10 million years ago, the Somali Plate began rifting from the African Plate along the East African Rift….

African Plate
Approximate area	61,300,000 km2 (23,700,000 sq mi)
Features	Africa, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea

Introduction. North Africa forms the northern margin of the African Plate and comprises the countries Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt (Figure 1).

Over the next 100m years, the position of Australia moved steadily south, towards more temperate zones, and finally to the edge of the Antarctic Circle by roughly 270m years ago (seven minutes ago, in our geofilm).

Africans have always been an integral part of Israel’s landscape. In fact, Israel itself, being geologically situated as it is on the African tectonic plate, is a part of Africa.

Israel stands at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa. Geographically, it belongs to the Asian continent and is part of the Middle East region. In the west, Israel is bound by the Mediterranean Sea.

As you can see in the image below, Cape Town is located quite in the centre of the African Plate. The African Plate shares boundaries with 7 other plates: The Eurasian plate, North American Plate, South American Plate, Arabian Plate, Indian Plate, Australian Plate and the Antarctic Plate in the South.

For millions of years the African plate, which contains part of the Mediterranean seabed, has been moving northward toward the Eurasian Plate at a rate of about an inch every 2.5 years (a centimeter a year).

The answer is yes. Pangea wasn’t the first supercontinent to form during Earth’s 4.5-billion-year geologic history, and it won’t be the last. Next came Rodinia, which dominated the planet between 1.2 billion and 750 million years ago.

African migrants climb the fence that separates Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa in February. On a rocky beach in North Africa, a chain-link fence juts out into the Mediterranean Sea. This is one of Africa’s two land borders with Europe, at two Spanish cities on the African continent.

Africa has been slowly colliding with Europe for millions of years, Scotese said. “Italy, Greece and almost everything in the Mediterranean is part of (the African plate), and it has been colliding with Europe for the last 40 million years.” Africa has collided with Europe, closing off the Mediterranean Sea.