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    The Theory of Continental Drift

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    Nyrrah Polvorosa

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    The Theory of Continental Drift

    Uploaded by

    Nyrrah Polvorosa
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    Original Title

    Continental drift

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    The Theory of Continental Drift

    Uploaded by

    Nyrrah Polvorosa

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Continental drift was a theory that explained how continents shift position on Earth's

    surface. Set forth in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, a geophysicist and meteorologist,


    continental drift also explained why look-alike animal and plant fossils, and similar rock
    formations, are found on different continents. 

    The theory of continental drift


    Wegener thought all the continents were once joined together in an "Urkontinent" before
    breaking up and drifting to their current positions. But geologists soundly denounced
    Wegener's theory of continental drift after he published the details in a 1915 book called
    "The Origin of Continents and Oceans." Part of the opposition was because Wegener didn't
    have a good model to explain how the continents moved apart. 
    Though most of Wegener's observations about fossils and rocks were correct, he was
    outlandishly wrong on a couple of key points. For instance, Wegener thought
    the continents might have plowed through the ocean crust like icebreakers smashing
    through ice. 
    "There's an irony that the key objection to continent drift was that there is no
    mechanism, and plate tectonics was accepted without a mechanism," to move the
    continents, said Henry Frankel, an emeritus professor at the University of Missouri-
    Kansas City and author of the four volume "The Continental Drift Controversy"
    (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
    Although Wegener's "continental drift" theory was discarded, it did introduce the idea of
    moving continents to geoscience. And decades later, scientists would confirm some of
    Wegener's ideas, such as the past existence of a supercontinent joining all the world's
    landmasses as one. Pangaea was a supercontinent that formed roughly 200 to 250
    million years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and was responsible
    for the fossil and rock clues that led Wegener to his theory. [Have There Always Been
    Continents?]
    Evolving theories
    When Wegener proposed continental drift, many geologists were contractionists. They
    thought Earth's incredible mountains were created because our planet was cooling and
    shrinking since its formation, Frankel said. And to account for the identical fossils
    discovered on continents such as South America and Africa, scientists invoked ancient
    land bridges, now vanished beneath the sea. 

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