Today, when people want to cross the ocean to another continent, they have to fly for eight hours or more or take the boat for a few days. However, if people were born millions of years ago, they could easily cross the border of two continents by accident. Because according to the theory of continental drift, a long time ago, today's continents were one piece and were called Pangea. (Sandner, 506-507) The theory of continental drift is a theory first proposed by German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1915. This theory suggests that parts of the Earth's crust called continents were slowly drifting above of a liquid core. He didn't come up with this idea by chance, but on a whim, there is actually strong evidence to support this theory. For example, the boundaries of the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appear to match on a world map. Furthermore, you can find fossils of similar animals and plants on different shores of continents, like the Mesosaurus fossil was found in South Africa and Brazil. (Continents Joined [This Dynamic Earth, USGS].) Not only do fossils prove this theory, but the same living animals are also found on two different continents. Additionally, Wegener discovered that the same rocks and mountain ranges begin on a continent and end on a coastline; but on another continent crossing the ocean there are similar rocks and mountain ranges appear. For example, people have found rocks of the same type and rocks in Greenland, Ireland, Scotland and Norway, which are places very far from each other. Last but not least, based on climatic evidence, scientists later pointed out that there are glacial streaks in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Anta...... middle paper......at hot spots rather than plate boundaries. The Hawaiian Islands are an example of a chain of shield volcanoes. Compared to composite volcanoes, the magma of shield volcanoes is much finer, so less gas will be trapped, leading to a less explosive eruption. Rift eruptions describe when magma erupts along cracks in the lithosphere. Rift eruptions are much less violent than other volcanic eruptions, but they release a large amount of lava. Rift eruptions are common on ocean ridges like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (Sandner, 532-534) Perhaps earthquakes and volcanic activities seem really scary to people and always cause destructive damage to people, they are natural phenomena that we should learn to understand and accept. It's impossible for people to completely avoid them all, but we can use our knowledge to predict them and minimize the damage...