4 min read There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of ... These convergent boundaries also occur where a plate of ocean dives, in a process called subduction, under a landmass.

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer ... Earth if you could see it 225 million years ago. Back then, all the major continents formed one giant supercontinent, called Pangaea.

At divergent boundaries, plates move away from each other and form mid-ocean ridges or major rift zones, and at strike-slip boundaries plates slide past each other.

A major example of this plate movement is along the coastline of South America (at the Nazca and South American plate boundary). Fold Mountains, such as the Andes, are also found at destructive ...