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Chapter 3 Vocabulary
| 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 a rise to todays continents |
| fossil | the preserved remains of traces of an organism that lived in the past |
| Mid-ocean ridge | An undersea mountain chain where new ocean floor is produced |
| Sea-floor spreading | The process by which molten material adds new oceanic crust to the ocean floor |
| deep-ocean trench | a deep valley along the floor beneath which oceanic crust slowly sinks toward the mantel |
| subduction | the process by which oceanic crust sinks beneath a deep ocean trench and back into the mantel at a convergent plate boundary |
| plate | a section of the lithosphere that slowly moves over the athensosphere, carrying pieces of continental and oceanic crust |
| divergent boundary | a plate boundary where two plates move away for each other |
| convergent boundary | a plate boundary where two plates move toward each other |
| transform boundary | a plate boundary where two plates move past each other I opposite directions |
| plate tectonics | the theory that pieces of earths lithosphere are in constant motion driven by convection currents in the mantel |
| fault | a break in the Earth's crust along which rocks move |
| rift valley | a deep valley that forms where two plates move apart |