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Chapter 3 vocab :)
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| continental drift | The hypothesis that the continents slowly move across Earth's surface |
| Pangaea | The name of the single landmass that began to break apart 200 million years ago and gave rise to today's continents |
| fossil | The preserved remains or traces of a organism that lived in the past |
| mid-ocean ridge | An undersea mountain chain where new ocean floor is produced; a divergent plate boundary |
| deep-ocean trench | A deep valley along the ocean floor beneath which oceanic crust slowly sinks toward the mantle |
| subduction | The process by which oceanic crust sinks beneath a deep-ocean trench and back into the mantle at a convergent plate boundary |
| plate | A section of the lithosphere that slowly move over the asthenosphere, carrying pieces of continental and oceanic crust |
| divergent boundary | A plate boundary where two plates move away from each other |
| convergent boundary | A plate boundary where two move toward each other |
| transform boundary | A plate boundary where two plates move past each other in opposite directions |
| plate tectonics | The theory that pieces of Earth's lithosphere are in constant motion, driven by convection currents in the mantle |
| fault | A break in Earth's crust along which rocks move |
| rift valley | A deep valley that forms where two plates move apart |
| Sea floor spreading | The process by which molten material adds new oceanic crust to the ocean floor |