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They change the earth in many ways, two major ways are; firstly they change the amount of land mass or water at the poles and equator, affecting the earths temperature greatly, and also they create or destroy land routes between continents. at one point all the land on earth was one large mass and you could have walked around one coastline! So in terms of how they affect the earth, this would be two ways that in turn have some huge ramifications. Tectonic plates are largely defined by fault lines and subduction zones that surroud them. They move through a process of subduction where new land is created in the middle and dissappears, often beneath continents, at the edges. this often means that large continents are pushed apart, but that is not always the case. the important thing to realise is that the earths crust is very thin comared to its non-solid interior, and as such moves about quite freely over time. a million years from now the earth will look quite different than today!

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