What is the theory of continental drift?
Learn more about the theory of continental drift.
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Transcript
Continental drift is the idea that Earth’s continents continually undergo large-scale horizontal movements.
This theory has a long history, originating about 1800 when German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt posited that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean had once been joined.
He came to this theory just by looking at maps of the land itself: the eastern coast of South America looked like it could fit into the western coast of Africa.
Over the next decades, other scientists brought forth more evidence for the theory of continental drift, such as the presence of identical plant fossils in North American and European coal deposits.
In 1912 meteorologist Alfred Wegener came forward with the first truly detailed explanation of continental drift.
Wegener thought that there had actually been only one continent for most of geologic time and that the giant continent had fragmented in the late Triassic Period.
When the different landmasses began to move away from each other, they became the distinct continents we know now.
The theory of continental drift was also instrumental in developing another theory—that of plate tectonics, which explains that the movement of large sections of Earth’s crust, called tectonic plates, causes changes in Earth’s surface.
Today, plate movements are thought to shift Earth’s continents about 2 centimeters (or 0.8 inch) per year.
This theory has a long history, originating about 1800 when German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt posited that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean had once been joined.
He came to this theory just by looking at maps of the land itself: the eastern coast of South America looked like it could fit into the western coast of Africa.
Over the next decades, other scientists brought forth more evidence for the theory of continental drift, such as the presence of identical plant fossils in North American and European coal deposits.
In 1912 meteorologist Alfred Wegener came forward with the first truly detailed explanation of continental drift.
Wegener thought that there had actually been only one continent for most of geologic time and that the giant continent had fragmented in the late Triassic Period.
When the different landmasses began to move away from each other, they became the distinct continents we know now.
The theory of continental drift was also instrumental in developing another theory—that of plate tectonics, which explains that the movement of large sections of Earth’s crust, called tectonic plates, causes changes in Earth’s surface.
Today, plate movements are thought to shift Earth’s continents about 2 centimeters (or 0.8 inch) per year.