In this activity students use maps of the positions of the continents over the past 180 million years, and, with some basic concepts about climate zones, hypothesize what climate changes may have occurred due to plate movements. They will discover that even though climate zones are oriented roughly parallel to lines of latitude about the Earth, according to the theory of plate tectonics, the continents "ride" on dynamic plates which make up the Earth's surface. Although the resulting movement of the continents is very slow, over millions of years it is enough to get a continent from one place to another, and that movement may take the landmass through several latitudes and climate zones.
This description of a site outside SERC has not been vetted by SERC staff and may be incomplete or incorrect. If you
have information we can use to flesh out or correct this record let us know.
This resource originally cataloged at:
