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Continental Drift Theory – Alfred Wegener | Pangea | Gondwanaland
Continental Drift Theory – Alfred Wegener | Pangea | Gondwanaland
Continental Drift Theory – Alfred Wegener | Pangea | Gondwanaland
5.5: Continental Drift [1]
The continental drift hypothesis was developed in the early part of the 20th century, mostly by Alfred Wegener. Wegener said that continents move around on Earth’s surface and that they were once joined together as a single supercontinent
Better yet, use a map where the edges of the continents show the continental shelf. Can you fit the pieces together? The easiest link is between the eastern Americas and western Africa and Europe, but the rest can fit together too (figure 1).
Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents were once united into a single supercontinent named Pangaea, meaning all earth in ancient Greek. He suggested that Pangaea broke up long ago and that the continents then moved to their current positions
Continental Drift [2]
Continental drift describes one of the earliest ways geologists thought continents moved over time. Today, the theory of continental drift has been replaced by the science of plate tectonics.
In the early 20th century, Wegener published a paper explaining his theory that the continental landmasses were “drifting” across the Earth, sometimes plowing through oceans and into each other. Wegener was convinced that all of Earth’s continents were once part of an enormous, single landmass called Pangaea.
For example, fossils of the ancient reptile mesosaurus are only found in southern Africa and South America. Mesosaurus, a freshwater reptile only one meter (3.3 feet) long, could not have swum the Atlantic Ocean
Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics [3]
Alfred Wegener, in the first three decades of this century, and DuToit in the 1920s and 1930s gathered evidence that the continents had moved. They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
Some had even wildly proposed that the continents had been split apart.. Among other things, he studied paleoclimate indicators in sedimentary strata
In rocks of the same age in equatorial Africa he knew there were glacial tillites. These indicated to Wegener that the continents must have moved (Europe from near the equator, Africa from the polar region into the equatorial region).
Continental drift [4]
Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth’s continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have “drifted” across the ocean bed.[1] The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth’s lithosphere.[2]. The speculation that continents might have “drifted” was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596
The English geologist Arthur Holmes later proposed mantle convection for that mechanism.. Abraham Ortelius (Ortelius 1596),[6] Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1756),[7] Alexander von Humboldt (1801 and 1845),[7] Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (Snider-Pellegrini 1858), and others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together.[8] W
suggested that the Americas were “torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods” and went on to say: “The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents].”
2.1: Alfred Wegener’s Continental Drift Hypothesis [5]
Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German scientist who specialized in meteorology and climatology. His knack for questioning accepted ideas started in 1910 when he disagreed with the explanation that the Bering Land Bridge was formed by isostasy and that similar land bridges once connected the continents [1]
While he did not have the precise mechanism worked out, his hypothesis was backed up by a long list of evidence.. Wegener’s first piece of evidence was that the coastlines of some continents fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
Antonio Snider-Pellegrini did preliminary work on continental separation and matching fossils in 1858.. What Wegener did differently was synthesizing a large amount of data in one place
The Theory Of Continental Drift [6]
At one point in geologic time, the world was made up of a single continent called Pangaea. Over time, this supercontinent separated and drifted apart, forming the different continents that exist today
In fact, the configuration of the Earth’s landmasses may change drastically from the way they are today.. The Earth’s plates have shifted over geologic time.
He used the theory of Pangaea’s existence along with field data collected from. He believed that the continents are made of lighter rocks that rest on heavier crustal material—similar to the way an iceberg floats in water
Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics [7]
Alfred Wegener, in the first three decades of this century, and DuToit in the 1920s and 1930s gathered evidence that the continents had moved. They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
Some had even wildly proposed that the continents had been split apart.. Among other things, he studied paleoclimate indicators in sedimentary strata
In rocks of the same age in equatorial Africa he knew there were glacial tillites. These indicated to Wegener that the continents must have moved (Europe from near the equator, Africa from the polar region into the equatorial region).
3.6 Theory of Plate Tectonics – Physical Geography and Natural Disasters [8]
Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German scientist who specialized in meteorology and climatology. This started in 1910 when he disagreed with isostasy (vertical land movement due to the weight being removed or added) as the explanation for the Bering Land Bridge
While he did not have the precise mechanism, he had an extensive list of evidence that backed up his continental drift hypothesis.. The first piece of evidence is that the shape of the coastlines of some continents fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
Antonio Snider-Pellegrini did preliminary work on continental separation and matching fossils in 1858.. Wegener did differently than others by synthesizing a significant amount of data in one place and using the shape of the continental shelf, the actual edge of the continent, instead of the current coastline, which fit even better than previous efforts
Continental Drift and Seafloor Spreading [9]
The Keys to Modern Earth and Oceanographic Sciences. Until only recently, geologists had thought that Earth’s surface hadn’t changed much since the planet formed 4.6 billion years ago
But less than 100 years ago, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener took notice of some interesting findings. Similar plant and animal fossils were found in both Africa and South America and on other continents separated by oceans
This suggested that the formations were once whole and later divided.. Wegener also noticed that if you could shove western Europe and Africa together with North and South America, their coastlines would fit together very neatly
Continental Drift [10]
Continental drift describes one of the earliest ways geologists thought continents moved over time. Today, the theory of continental drift has been replaced by the science of plate tectonics.
In the early 20th century, Wegener published a paper explaining his theory that the continental landmasses were “drifting” across the Earth, sometimes plowing through oceans and into each other. Wegener was convinced that all of Earth’s continents were once part of an enormous, single landmass called Pangaea.
For example, fossils of the ancient reptile mesosaurus are only found in southern Africa and South America. Mesosaurus, a freshwater reptile only one meter (3.3 feet) long, could not have swum the Atlantic Ocean
Developing the theory [This Dynamic Earth, USGS] [11]
Continental drift was hotly debated off and on for decades following Wegener’s. death before it was largely dismissed as being eccentric, preposterous,
emerged to revive the debate about Wegener’s provocative ideas and their. In particular, four major scientific developments spurred
ruggedness and youth of the ocean floor; (2) confirmation of repeated reversals. of the Earth magnetic field in the geologic past; (3) emergence of the seafloor-spreading
Continental drift | Definition, Evidence, Diagram, & Facts [12]
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.. – National Center for Biotechnology Information – PubMed Central – Continental drift and climate change drive instability in insect assemblages
– plate tectonics diastrophism paleocontinent convection current. continental drift, large-scale horizontal movements of continents relative to one another and to the ocean basins during one or more episodes of geologic time
The idea of a large-scale displacement of continents has a long history. Noting the apparent fit of the bulge of eastern South America into the bight of Africa, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt theorized about 1800 that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean had once been joined
Alfred Wegener and His Theory of Continental Drift [13]
If there were a “geographical forecast”, analogous to the predictions of meteorologists, it would show how over the next 100 million years the Atlantic Ocean will continue to expand, until it is much larger than the Pacific. And also how Africa will merge with Europe, with the Mediterranean disappearing and a mountain range emerging in its place to compete with the Himalayas—although Everest and its neighbouring mountains will still continue to rise
Thanks to his hypothesis, any child today knows that the continents are slowly moving and were joined together at the time when the dinosaurs appeared.. Ever since the appearance of the first world maps, many people had noticed how well Brazil fits snugly under the belly of Africa
He found research on identical fossils on the coasts of Africa and South America, something for which geologists, convinced that the world map was immutable, had offered a more implausible explanation: land bridges that had vanished after permitting animals and plants to travel from one continent to another.. But no matter how many bridges were dreamt up, the most renowned geologists were unable to explain why in Africa there are marking of glaciers or why near the North Pole there are remains of tropical vegetation in the form of coal
Continental Drift: The groundbreaking theory of moving continents [14]
Continental Drift: The groundbreaking theory of moving continents. Continental drift theory introduced the idea of moving continents.
The theory was proposed by geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1912, but was rejected by mainstream science at the time. Scientists confirmed some of Wegener’s ideas decades later, which are now part of the widely accepted theory of plate tectonics.
He proposed that Earth must have once been a single supercontinent before breaking up to form several different continents. This explained how similar rock formations and plant and animal fossils could exist on separated continents
Sources
- https://geo.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Geology/Fundamentals_of_Geology_(Schulte)/05%3A_Plate_Tectonics/5.05%3A_Continental_Drift#:~:text=The%20evidence%20for%20continental%20drift,locations%20of%20ancient%20climatic%20zones.
- https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/continental-drift#:~:text=Fossils%20of%20similar%20organisms%20across,revolutionary%20theory%20of%20continental%20drift.&text=1%2F8-,Continental%20drift%20describes%20one%20of%20the%20earliest,thought%20continents%20moved%20over%20time.
- http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/devel_pl_tect.htm#:~:text=Alfred%20Wegener%2C%20in%20the%20first,truncated%20geologic%20features%2C%20and%20fossils.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
- https://geo.libretexts.org/Courses/Gettysburg_College/Book%3A_An_Introduction_to_Geology_(Johnson_Affolter_Inkenbrandt_and_Mosher)/02%3A_Plate_Tectonics/2.01%3A_Alfred_Wegeners_Continental_Drift_Hypothesis
- https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/earth-surface-2/the-theory-of-continental-drift.html
- http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/devel_pl_tect.htm
- https://slcc.pressbooks.pub/physicalgeography/chapter/3-6/
- https://divediscover.whoi.edu/history-of-oceanography/continental-drift-and-seafloor-spreading/
- https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/continental-drift
- https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/developing.html
- https://www.britannica.com/science/continental-drift-geology
- https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/leading-figures/alfred-wegener-theory-of-continental-drift/
- https://www.livescience.com/37529-continental-drift.html
