Wegener concluded that this distribution of fossils could only exist if these continents were joined together. In 1911 he happened on a scientific publication that included a description of the existence of matching Permian-aged terrestrial fossils in various parts of South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, and Australia (Figure 4.1.2). 1924-1930 (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).Īlfred Wegener (1880-1930) earned a PhD in astronomy at the University of Berlin in 1904, but he had always been interested in geophysics and meteorology and spent most of his academic career working in meteorology. We can credit Alfred Wegener (Figure 4.1.1) as the originator of this idea.įigure 4.1.1 Prof. However, we now know that it is not just the continents that move, so a more correct term is plate tectonics. This apparent fit is due to the fact the continents were once connected, and have since moved apart in what has been called continental drift. An early reference to this phenomenon came from Francis Bacon in the 17th century, who noticed the similarities in the Atlantic coasts of Africa, and North and South America.
If you look at a map of Earth, you may notice that some of the continents seem to fit together. Modified from "Physical Geology" by Steven Earle* 4.1 Alfred Wegener and the Theory of Plate Tectonics
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