Driving forces of plate motion and continental drift: Revisited

From Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics

SINCE THE l6TH CENTURY, CARTOGRAPHERS HAVE NOTICED THE jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continental edges. Since the 19th century, geologists have known that some fossil plants and animals are extraordinarily similar across the globe, and some sequences of rock formations in distant continents are also strikingly alike. At the turn of the 20th century, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess proposed the theor...

Alfred Wegener and continental drift

Darwin's continental drift

Lisbon is grandly celebrating the Darwin anniversaries, but to the east in Turkey things are different.

Forces Driving Continental Deformation GEOL5700, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth

Gravitational potential energy of the Tibetan Plateau and the forces driving the Indian plate

We present a study of the vertically integrated deviatoric stress field for the Indian plate and the Tibetan Plateau associated with gravitational potential energy (GPE) differences. Although the driving forces for the Indian plate have been attributed solely to the mid-oceanic ridges that surround the entire southern boundary of the plate, previous estimates of vertically integrated stress mag...