From the deepest ocean trench to the tallest mountain, plate tectonics explains the features and movement of Earth's surface in the present and the past.
The theory of plate tectonics was developed from the 1950s to the 1970s. It is the modern update to continental drift, an idea first proposed by scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912, who that Earth’s continents had "drifted" across the planet over time. Wegener didn't have an explanation for how continents could move around the planet, but researchers do now: Plate tectonics.
