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Why are the polar wandering curves of Europe and North America different?

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Watch Earth's Continents Move — paleogeography Watch a time-lapse of Earth changing through geologic time, from the Cambrian Era to the projected period of Pangea Proxima.

In the context of paleogeography, the observation that polar wandering curves for Europe and North America do not agree is a fundamental piece of evidence for continental drift.1

If the continents were fixed in position, the path of a magnetic pole over Earth would appear identical regardless of the observer's location. However, because continents move relative to one another over geologic time, the magnetic poles—as recorded by remanent magnetism in rocks—appear to follow different paths when plotted relative to each specific continent.12

The possibility that these curves represent the actual migration of the magnetic poles themselves was discarded because it would imply separate, conflicting wanderings of magnetic poles for different continents over the same period. Instead, these divergent paths are reconciled by the theory of plate tectonics. For example, the curves for Europe and North America align when one assumes that North America has drifted approximately 30° westward relative to Europe since the Triassic Period.2