Video pedia World - Inside The Earth: Formation Of Mountains. Water Cycle - Earthguide Animated Diagram. Interactive Rock Cycle Animation. Earth-Sun Relations. Caribbean VR. (Read the explanation below, while you wait for the animation to load.) This animation shows the breakup of Pangea and the pattern of seafloor spreading that created the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans during the last 150 million years. Plate tectonics is the theory that describes how the outermost, rigid layer of the Earth has moved through time. When plates converge they collide and a one plate dives back down into the Earth in a region called a subduction zone. Earthquakes and volcanoes occur in the vicinity of subduction zones. When plates move apart, a crack or rift forms in the middle of the ocean. This rift is sometimes also called the "mid-ocean ridge". The colors in the animation illustrate both the age of the ocean floor and the symmetry of sea floor spreading.
You can control this animation by dragging the mouse across the map. This animation is available on CD-ROM in Quicktime format. This page uses a java applet that displays a VR model. (c) PALEOMAP Project, 2002.