Geological Society of America Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Geological Society of America - Assignment Example The presence of these plates can be confirmed by the appearance of oceanic trenches when these plates sink beneath one another. These trenches can run for hundreds of miles. Another evidence of their existence and activity is the formation of ridges where these plates pull apart. Transform faults also form where the tectonic plates slide to opposite sides of each other (Eckel, 1982). The movement of plates was used to settle the debate on how the island arcs, both continental and oceanic, form. Island arcs form where oceanic and continental, oceanic or transitional plates sink beneath each other. The past decades saw the geoscience community reject research and theories on the formation of island arcs based on the tectonic plates. To add to this conflict, there was conflicting continent formation theories based on tectonic plates. One considered seafloor-spreading while the other was in favor of pieces of continents afloat dense oceanic