Did You Know? The Chile triple junction is the only modern site on Earth where an actively spreading mid-ocean ridge crest is being swallowed by a subduction zone at a continental margin. read more
There are three kinds of plate tectonic boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries. This image shows the three main types of plate boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform. read more
Continental and oceanic are the two types of tectonic plates. Continental plates tend to be larger than oceanic and bear the majority of a continent's mass. read more
Developed from the 1950s through the 1970s, plate tectonics is the modern version of continental drift, a theory first proposed by scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912. Wegener didn't have an explanation for how continents could move around the planet, but researchers do now. read more