Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Geologists generally agree that the following tectonic plates currently exist on Earth's surface with roughly definable boundaries. Tectonic plates are sometimes subdivided into three fairly arbitrary categories: major (or primary) plates, minor (or secondary) plates, and microplates (or tertiary plates).
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') is the scientific theory that Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago.
The key principle of plate tectonics is that the lithosphere exists as separate and distinct tectonic plates, which ride on the fluid-like solid the asthenosphere. Plate motions range from 10 to 40 millimetres per year (0.4 to 1.6 in/year) at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (about as fast as fingernails grow), to about 160 millimetres per year (6.3 in ...
When a large portion of dense materials was removed under the tectonic plate at this location, the remaining portion of the crust and lithosphere underwent a rapid uplift forming this mountain range. In geodynamics , delamination refers to the loss and sinking (foundering) of the portion of the lowermost lithosphere from the tectonic plate to ...
Extensional tectonics is associated with the stretching and thinning of the crust or the lithosphere.This type of tectonics is found at divergent plate boundaries, in continental rifts, during and after a period of continental collision caused by the lateral spreading of the thickened crust formed, at releasing bends in strike-slip faults, in back-arc basins, and on the continental end of ...
Diagram of a cross-section of the Patagonia slab window. The Nazca plate and Antarctic plate are colliding with the South American plate at the Chile Ridge. [1]In geology, a slab window is a gap that forms in a subducted oceanic plate when a mid-ocean ridge meets with a subduction zone and plate divergence at the ridge and convergence at the subduction zone continue, causing the ridge to be ...
An aulacogen is a failed arm of a triple junction. [1] Aulacogens are a part of plate tectonics where oceanic and continental crust is continuously being created, destroyed, and rearranged on the Earth’s surface. Rift zones are places where new crust is formed. An aulacogen is a rift zone that is no longer active. [2]
Epiphyseal plate, a hyaline cartilage plate in the metaphysis at each end of a long bone; Lateral pterygoid plate of the sphenoid, a broad, thin and everted bone that forms the lateral part of a horseshoe like process that extends from the inferior aspect of the sphenoid bone; Nail plate, the hard and translucent portion of the nail