Continental Drift

geology · Earth science · plate tectonics · super slow

Continents move slowly. The continents we see on maps today are not stuck in one place. They drift across Earth's surface very slowly, moving just a few centimeters each year, which means it takes millions of years for them to travel great distances.

Plates carry continents. Continents ride on giant pieces of Earth's lithosphere called plates, kind of like passengers on floating rafts. These plates bump into each other, slide past each other, and sometimes dive under one another, causing earthquakes and building mountains.

A modern discovery. Scientists figured out continental drift in the early 1900s by noticing that continents fit together like puzzle pieces and had matching fossils and rock patterns. This discovery completely changed how we understand Earth and led to the bigger science called plate tectonics.

Shapes the world. Continental drift creates mountains, opens ocean basins, and changes which animals live where. Over hundreds of millions of years, it has rearranged the continents from one giant supercontinent into the seven we know today.