Plate tectonics is geology’s Principle of The whole lot. The realisation within the Nineteen Sixties that Earth’s crust is fabricated from fragments known as plates—and that these plates can develop, shrink and transfer round—defined the origins of mountain ranges, ocean trenches, volcanoes and earthquakes. It additionally defined why continents drift over the planet’s floor and thus, sometimes, come collectively to kind an all-embracing supercontinent.
