The creation of Pangaea, several hundred million years ago, occurred when the two major continental plates, Laurasia (N.America, Europe, Asia) and Gondwanaland (S.America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica) collided. For an animation showing how all the southern continents in Gondwanaland once fit together, click HERE. As the land drifted apart, rift valleys where created (such as the Red Sea). Where continents collide, we see large up-swelling of crust, called folded mountain chains, such as the Himalayas.

Evidence for Global Tectonic Motion: 1) The age of the Ocean Floor Blue is old (about 180 million years), red is very young, being less than a few million years old. As you move away from the mid-oceanic ridges, the age of the crust increases. Mid-Oceanic Ridges have been splitting the continents at a rate of about 10 cm/year, it takes 200 million years to cross the Earth, thus no oceanic crust is particularly old, all being less than 200 million years old. However, continental crust is typically 1-3 billion years old.

2) The Magnetic field in Oceanic Rocks When magma rises, the iron inside lines up with the current magnetic field. Once it hardens the iron is locked into that alignment. The Ocean showed a mirrored record of a changing magnetic field on Earth, meaning the ocean crust was splitting and expanding, moving the continents apart.

3) Location of Earthquakes and Volcanism
Sites with high occurrence of earthquakes and volcanos will always line up exactly along the plate boundaries identified above, or over hot spots (like the Hawaiian Islands).