— Continents and oceans —

Land masses adrift

The world as it appears, and many natural processes that have a direct impact on our daily lives, are the ultimate result of plate tectonics. The tectonic plates are jigsaw pieces of the rigid outer layer shell of the Earth that shuffle against each other. At the plate edges, nature is at its wildest, it is where we find volcanoes, dangerous fault lines, mountain ranges and deep-sea gorges.

Read:

• Land bridges in the Middle East: Red Sea, Tethys and wandering hominids
• Ocean Planet: Cousteau, whales with legs, and aquatic humans.
• 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake: rupture in the heart of a triple junction.
• The Mediterranean dried up almost completely during the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
• The East African Rift System: a belt of natural wonders.
• Tethys: a vanished ocean now lying in the mountains.
• Africa: the long voyage of an ancient continent.
• Plate Tectonics: caterpillar tracks of the planet.