Gabbro and peridotite are among the layered constituents of the huge "Coast Range" example of these formations in the western United States. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these rock formations formed from sections of oceanic crust that end up atop continental crust. Their name references the snake-like surface of some of the earliest discovered examples.
ANSWER: ophiolites
[10e] The origin of ophiolites was ill-understood until the development of this theory in the 1960s, which used observations of seafloor spreading to explain continental drift.
ANSWER: plate tectonics
[10m] Some ophiolites provide evidence for the changing shape of this ocean, which separated Laurasia from Gondwana until it ceased to exist in the early Cenozoic.
ANSWER: Tethys Ocean [or Tethys Sea; or Neo-Tethys]
<Joseph Krol , Science - Earth - solids>