Continental drift
Deriva continental
- Date
- 1912 · confidence high
- Place
- Frankfurt am Main, Germany (1912 lecture)
- Credited to
- Alfred Wegener; precedents by Ortelius (1596), Snider-Pellegrini (1858), Taylor (1910)
- People
- 👤 Alfred Wegener1880–1930👤 Frank Bursley Taylor1860–1938
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Wegener proposed that the continents once formed a supercontinent, Pangaea, and have since drifted apart, based on the fit of the coastlines, shared fossils (Glossopteris, Mesosaurus) and continuous rock formations between Africa and South America. It was rejected for lack of a mechanism.
Coordinates of Frankfurt, where Wegener presented the hypothesis on 6 January 1912. He died in Greenland in 1930 without seeing his theory accepted.
What it led to
- Plate tectonics (after 50 years of rejection)
- Palaeogeography and reconstruction of supercontinents
- Classic example of a scientific revolution
Built on
- Gondwana formation and Glossopteris flora1872
- Das Antlitz der Erde: a synthesis of global geology (Suess)1883-1909
- Coastline fit observed since Ortelius
- Suess's intercontinental land bridges (Gondwana)