Wegener’s Evidence for Continental

Drift
Wegener suggested that a vast supercontinent, Pangaea, existed until near
the end of the Mesozoic Era (the interval of geologic time that lasted from
251 to 65 million years ago). He suggested that Pangaea then broke apart,
and the landmasses moved away from each other to form the continents
we see today. Let’s look at some of Wegener’s arguments and see what
led him to formulate this hypothesis of continental drift.

The Fit of the Continents

Almost as soon as maps of the Atlantic coastlines became available in the
1500s, scholars noticed the fit of the continents. The northwestern coast of
Africa could tuck in against the eastern coast of North America, and the
bulge of eastern South America could nestle cozily into the indentation of
southwestern Africa. Australia, Antarctica, and India could all connect to the
southeast of Africa, while Greenland, Europe, and Asia could pack against
the northeastern margin of North America. In fact, all the continents could
be joined, with remarkably few overlaps or gaps, to create Pangaea.
Wegener concluded that the fit was too good to be coincidence and thus
that the continents once did fit together.

Locations of Past Glaciations

Glaciers are rivers or sheets of ice that flow across the land surface. As a
glacier flows, it carries sediment grains of all sizes (clay, silt, sand, pebbles,
and boulders). Grains protruding from the base of the moving ice carve
scratches, called striations, into the substrate. When the ice melts, it leaves
the sediment in a deposit called till, that buries striations. Thus, the
occurrence of till and striations at a location serve as evidence that the
region was covered by a glacier in the past (see chapter opening photo).
By studying the age of glacial till deposits, geologists have determined that
large areas of the land were covered by glaciers during time intervals of
Earth history called ice ages. One of these ice ages occurred from about
326 to 267 Ma, near the end of the Paleozoic Era. Evidence for
continental drift

A map of the continents inspired Wegener's quest to

explain Earth's geologic history. Trained as a
meteorologist, he was intrigued by the interlocking fit of
Africa's and South America's shorelines. Wegener then
assembled an impressive amount of evidence to show that
Earth's continents were once connected in a single
supercontinent.
Wegener knew that fossil plants and animals such
as mesosaurs, a freshwater reptile found only South America
and Africa during the Permian period, could be found on
many continents. He also matched up rocks on either side
of the Atlantic Ocean like puzzle pieces. For example, the
Appalachian Mountains (United States) and Caledonian
Mountains (Scotland) fit together, as do the Karroo strata
in South Africa and Santa Catarina rocks in Brazil.
In fact, plates moving together created the highest
mountains in the world, the Himalayans, and the
mountains are still growing due to the plates pushing
together, even now, , according to National Geographic.

Pangaea or Pangea ( /pænˈdʒiːə/[1]) was a supercontinent that existed

during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.[2][3] It assembled from
earlier continental units approximately 335 million years ago, and it began
to break apart about 175 million years ago.[4] In contrast to the
present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea
was in the southern hemisphereand surrounded by a
superocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent to
have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.

origin of the concept

The name "Pangaea/Pangea" is derived from Ancient Greek pan (πᾶν, "all,
entire, whole") and Gaia (Γαῖα, "Mother Earth, land").[5][10] The concept that
the continents once formed a continuous land mass was first proposed
by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the scientific theory of continental drift,
in his 1912 publication The Origin of Continents (Die Entstehung der
Kontinente).[11] He expanded upon his hypothesis in his 1915 book The
Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und
Ozeane), in which he postulated that, before breaking up and drifting to
their present locations, all the continents had formed a
single supercontinent that he called the "Urkontinent".

Laurasia ( /lɔːˈreɪʒə/ or /lɔːˈreɪʃiə/)[1] was the more northern of

two supercontinents (the other being Gondwana) that formed part of
the Pangaea supercontinent around 335 to 175 million years ago (Mya). It
separated from Gondwana 215 to 175 Mya (beginning in the
late Triassic period) during the breakup of Pangaea, drifting farther north
after the split.
The name combines the names of Laurentia, the name given to the North
American craton, and Eurasia. As suggested by the geologic naming,
Laurasia included most of the land masses which make up today's
continents of the Northern Hemisphere,
chiefly Laurentia, Baltica, Siberia, Kazakhstania, and the North
China and East China cratons
Although Laurasia is known as a Mesozoic phenomenon, today it is
believed that the same continents that formed the later Laurasia also
existed as a coherent supercontinent after the breakup of Rodinia around
750 million years ago. To avoid confusion with the Mesozoic continent, this
is referred to as Proto-Laurasia. It is believed that Laurasia did not break
up again before it recombined with the southern continents to form the
late Precambrian supercontinent of Pannotia, which remained until the
early Cambrian. Laurasia was assembled, then broken up, due to the
actions of plate tectonics, continental drift, and seafloor spreading