<Li> In 1967, at the American Geophysical Union's meeting, W. Jason Morgan proposed that the Earth's surface consists of 12 rigid plates that move relative to each other . </Li> <Li> Two months later, Xavier Le Pichon published a complete model based on 6 major plates with their relative motions, which marked the final acceptance by the scientific community of plate tectonics . </Li> <Li> In the same year, McKenzie and Parker independently presented a model similar to Morgan's using translations and rotations on a sphere to define the plate motions . </Li> <P> The Plate Tectonics Revolution was the scientific and cultural change which developed from the acceptance of the plate tectonics theory . The event was a paradigm shift and scientific revolution . </P>

The driving force behind plate tectonics is thought to be