Geology

If you could fast-forward 250 million years in the future, you would witness all continents will assemble into one giant supercontinent called Pangea Ultima.

From large to small, the 7 major tectonic plates include the Pacific, North American, Eurasian, African, Antarctic, Indo-Australian and South American plate.

Conservative or transform plate boundaries slide across each other. They neither converge or diverge such as parts of the North American and Pacific Plate.

We can’t physically go inside the Earth. But we use seismic tomography from earthquakes to see inside our planet. From Earth tomography, we create 3D models.

The Paleozoic Era marked the first fossil records of animal life.The Cambrian explosion was the largest diversification of life in Earth’s history.

The Pacific Plate stretches all the way along the west coast of North America and reaches all the way to the east coast of the islands of Japan & Indonesia.

Volcanoes are the foundation for igneous rocks. When volcanoes erupt, magma and lava spews out. After cooling and solidifying, they become igneous rocks.

Convergent plate boundaries have some of the most violent catastrophes and geology on Earth. When plates smash together, it has created chains of volcanoes.

4,567,000,000 years ago, Earth was covered in molten lava. In the Hadean Eon, it was in its earliest stage of formation as it clumped from a cloud of dust.

The African major plate contains all of Africa as well as the surrounding oceanic crust of the Atlantic Ocean. It moves at an average rate of 2.5 cm per year.

Soil formation is vital for food production and plant growth. Weathering is the process that breaks rock down into soils. Without it, soil wouldn’t exist.

Biological weathering can occur from mechanical force and chemical reactions such as through plants, bacteria, fungi, burrowing animals and living organisms

The evidence that Vaalbara (2.7-3.6 billion years ago) was the first supercontinent is mainly based on their sedimentary sequences and magnetic orientation.

Long ago, oxygen filled the oceans. It mixed with iron which reacted by rusting. The seafloor collected rusted iron called banded iron formation (BIF).

At one point in time, all continents were merged together as one supercontinent “Pangea”. We’ve used fossil evidence to know continental drift exists.