A map of the world is shown below. The southeast coast of North America and the northwest coast of Africa are highlighted in red. Consider the southeast coast of North America and the northwest coast of Africa. According to the current theory of plate tectonics, these two regions were once very close together. However, the coasts do not quite fit together like puzzle pieces, as one might expect. This can be explained by the fact that the southeast edge of North America's actually does fit nicely with the northwest edge of Africa's even if the coasts do not.