CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY
Plate tectonics is the theory used to explain the structure of the Earth’s crust and
many of the associated phenomena. The rigid lithosphere is split into 7 major
‘plates’ that slowly move on top of the underlying asthenosphere (mantle). This
branch of geology studies the faulting and folding of the crust along the various
boundaries; convergent, divergent, subduction, and conservative. The concept of
Plate Tectonics was first coined by the German geophysicist Alfred
Wegener back in 1915, but several ideas of continental drift date back many
years before. Today we almost take for granted our knowledge of how the
Earth’s crust shifts and regenerates on a continual cycle; but the theory of plate
tectonics wasn’t widely accepted until the 1960s!
In his time, Alfred Wegner (1880–1930) was known for his work in
meteorology and polar research, but today he is best remembered for his
additions to the development of continental drift theory. His first ideas came
from noticing that the continents of the Earth fit together very closely – but not
along their coastlines (this is because of erosion/weathering). He noticed that, at
the continental shelves, all the large Earth masses fit nearly perfectly. Wegener
went on several expeditions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to analyze rock
type and fossil distribution, and he found a very significant ‘matching’ between
the East and West sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It was shown that 2 billion year
old rocks were continuous from one continent to another when placed side by
side. This also applied to fossil records, including the fresh-water reptile,
Mesosaurus (found across South Africa and southern South America), the land
reptile Lystrosaurus (found in a band across current India, Antarctica, and central
Africa).
At the time, some of the most prominent theories were that species evolved
independently from one another, or that they swam across oceans to get to their
current locations. The best received theory was the idea that ‘land bridges‘ rose
and fell randomly during Earth’s geological history. These enormous portions of
land, which would spontaneously rise and fall out of the ocean floor, were
suggested to exist long enough to that they gave flora and fauna enough time to
move around the globe. However, Wegener deduced that the continents must
have once been connected in a single super continent (Pangaea), and from this
mass the continents drifted apart. He presented his ideas to the German
Geological Association in 1912, and wrote a book titled ‘The Origin on
Continents and Oceans’ in 1915. What let Wegener down was his proposed
mechanism; he suggested that the movement was a result of centrifugal force
from the Earth’s rotation, or tidal effects from the moon. Wegener’s last
contribution was just before his death, in which he found that shallower oceans
were younger. It wasn’t until a while later that another geologist, Harry
Hammond Hess, also saw similar observations in the ocean floors. During his
service in the US Naval Army in WWII, Hess had access to SONAR
technology, which he used to map the sea floor in a series of surveys. He found
two things. First, he found what are now called “Mid Ocean Ridges” (e.g. The
Mid Atlantic Ridge that runs vertically along the ocean floor and is thousands of
kilometres in length) that were up to 1.5km higher than surrounding crust.
Second, he discovered that (conversely) the deepest parts of the ocean were
actually very close to continental margins in the Pacific. These trenches extended
down over 11km (e.g. The Marianas Trench off the coast of Japan). From this
discovery he deduced that the Atlantic must be expanding from its center as
molten rock from the mantle underneath seeps through fissures along the Mid
Atlantic Ridge. This explained why the rocks became progressively older as he
moved away (instead of a uniform 4.5 billions years) and why there is so little
sediment deposits found on the ocean floor (see the image below for
clarification).
Hess decided that the
explanation for his
findings must be that not
only were the continents
moving, but the sea floor
was also spreading in a
‘conveyor belt’ system.
His idea was based on
mantle convection. At the
ridges, hot magma rises up after being heated by the core. At the crust, it hardens
and becomes the newest part of the sea floor. As magma continues to rise in the
convection current, the oceanic crust is pushed aside so that more seeps through
the gap. The outward movement of magma underneath the lithosphere
effectively ‘pushes’ it outwards – expanding the oceans. Hess claimed that, if
rock is being pushed out of the mantle and hardening into crust, it must also be
destroyed somewhere else (about 3 km² destroyed and created a year) – this was
his explanation for the deep trenches at the edges of continental shelves.
Here, he suggested that the dense oceanic crust is subducting below the less
dense continental plates, where it is then to be melted and recycled within the
mantle. In 1962 he published his book ‘History of Ocean Basins.” This,
combined with his fantastic speaking skills, generated a major leap forward
towards the acceptance of Plate Tectonics and continental drift. One of the
reasons Hess was more successful in convincing geologists, when compared to
Wegener, was that he said the continents were actually just carried along as the
ocean floor spread. Wegener had said that the continents pushed through the
ocean floor as they moved, which was deemed impossible by critics. Therefore,
Hess’s model of the reasoning behind continental drift was more easily accepted.
Very soon after, new findings were published that further reinforced Hess’ ‘sea
floor spreading’. This is known as “paleomagnetism.” Two British geologists
worked with this idea – named Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews from
Cambridge University. Vine was actually a PhD student under Matthews at the
time of their research. Paleomagnetism is based on the idea of ‘polar wandering’
and ‘polar switching’. This means that the Earth’s magnetic field moves over
long periods of time, or completely reverses its direction at different intervals.
Magma contains a large concentration of magnetite and iron, so that (in its
molten state) the ions are free to align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic
field. When the magma cools and hardens into the basalt ocean floor, it acts as a
record, preserving the direction and latitude of poles at that time. In the 1950s,
scientists developed a way of measuring this, and so Cine and Matthews’ work
involved looking at the magnetic patterns in the ocean floor. What they found  accurate. The Earth’s crust is constantly changing, driven by heat from the
was a very obvious symmetrical pattern of ‘stripes’ parallel to the ocean ridge. In
addition, when these rocks were dated, they were discovered to have the same
age at equal distances on either side of the ridge. These findings completely
supported Hess’ theory that the oceanic lithosphere is created at mid ocean
ridges, and then split in half and moved outwards. This idea is know known as
the Vine-Matthews-Morley Hypothesis.There is also much
climate evidence supporting continental drift, most notable of which is glacial
activity. Alfred Wegener investigated this field and found an anomaly in the
Permo-Carboniferous ice sheet that was found through glacial till deposits to
have once covered all the southern major plates. If the continents were in their
current positions about 300 million years ago, this glacier would cover most of
the globe and extend above the equator. But geologists have found no evidence
of glacial action in the northern hemisphere at this time, and instead say the
climate was warm and even tropical. Also, glacial striations (essentially ‘cut
marks’) found in rocks from the movement of this ice sheet show that the
direction in which it was moving was outwards from a central point in southern
Africa. If the continents are set adjacent to one another at the south pole, these
striations line up with each other.
This aided Wegener’s theory that the continents were once all joined as a single
landmass. He also reconstructed the distribution of climate zones at different
times in the past, and compared this to the distribution of rock types found across
the globe. For example, Britain is now in a temperate latitude surrounded by a
cold ocean and cold seas,
but its geology doesn’t
suggest this. We can find
lots of limestone (e.g.
The White Cliffs of
Dover) and coal, and
these only forms in
warm, shallow seas. So
the UK must have once
been positioned much
closer to the equator. Also, in the Antarctic, you can find coral reefs, suggesting
also that Antarctica was also once in a much warmer climate belt. Wegener
suggested that the poles remained stationary and that the continents changed
their positions relative to the poles, which we know know is not accurate
(actually, both the continents and poles continuously shift in position).
After huge contributions from several pioneers over the last century, all the
evidence suggests that the theory of Plate Tectonics and continental drift is
Earth’s core. Even today, the continents are still moving – set to reform a super-
continent again in 250 million years as ‘Pangaea Ultima’.
Continental drift was a revolutionary scientific theory developed in the years
1908-1912 by Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), a German meteorologist,
climatologist, and geophysicist, that put forth the hypothesis that the
continents had all originally been a part of one enormous landmass or
supercontinent about 240 million years ago before breaking apart and drifting
to their current locations. Based on the work of previous scientists who had
theorized about horizontal movement of the continents over the Earth's
surface during different periods of geologic time, and based on his own
observations drawing from different fields of science, Wegener postulated
that about 200 million years ago, a supercontinent that he called Pangaea
(which means "all lands" in Greek) began to break up. Over millions of years
the pieces separated, first into two smaller supercontinents, Laurasia and
Gondwanaland, during the Jurassic period and then by the end of the
Cretaceous period into the continents we know today.
Wegener first presented his ideas in 1912 and then published them in 1915 in
his controversial book, "The Origins of Continents and Oceans," which was
received with great skepticism and even hostility. He revised and published
subsequent editions of his book in 1920,1922, and 1929. The book (Dover
translation of the 1929 fourth German edition) is still available today on
Amazon and elsewhere.
Wegener's theory, although not completely correct, and by his own
admission, incomplete, sought to explain why similar species of animals and
plants, fossil remains, and rock formations exist on disparate lands separated
by great distances of sea. It was an important and influential step that
ultimately led to the development of the theory of plate tectonics, which is
how scientists understand the structure, history, and dynamics of the Earth’s
crust.
Opposition to Continental Drift Theory
There was much opposition to Wegener's theory for several reasons. For one,
he was not an expert in the field of science in which he was making
a hypothesis, and for another, his radical theory threatened conventional and
accepted ideas of the time. Furthermore, because he was making
observations that were multidisciplinary, there were more scientists to find
fault with them.
There were also alternative theories to counter Wegener’s continental drift
theory. A commonly held theory to explain the presence of fossils on
disparate lands was that there was once a network of land bridges connecting
the continents that had sunk into the sea as part of a general cooling and
contraction of the earth. Wegener, however, refuted this theory maintaining
that continents were made of a less dense rock than that of the deep-sea floor
and so would have risen to the surface again once the force weighing them
down had been lifted. Since this had not occurred, according to Wegener, the
only logical alternative was that the continents themselves had been joined
and had since drifted apart.
Another theory was that the fossils of temperate species found in the arctic
regions were carried there by warm water currents. Scientists debunked these
theories, but at the time they helped stall Wegener’s theory from gaining
acceptance.
In addition, many of the geologists who were Wegener's contemporaries
were contractionists. They believed that the Earth was in the process of
cooling and shrinking, an idea they used to explain the formation of
mountains, much like wrinkles on a prune. Wegener, though, pointed out that
if this were true, mountains would be scattered evenly all over the Earth's
surface rather than lined up in narrow bands, usually at the edge of a
continent. He also offered a more plausible explanation for mountain ranges.
He said they formed when the edge of a drifting continent crumpled and
folded — as when India hit Asia and formed the Himalayas.
One of the biggest flaws of Wegener’s continental drift theory was that he
did not have a viable explanation for how continental drift could have
occurred. He proposed two different mechanisms, but each was weak and
could be disproven. One was based on the centrifugal force caused by the
rotation of the Earth, and the other was based on the tidal attraction of the
sun and the moon.
Though much of what Wegener theorized was correct, the few things that
were wrong were held against him and prevented him from seeing his theory
accepted by the scientific community during his lifetime. However, what he
got right paved the way for plate tectonics theory.
Data Supporting Continental Drift Theory
Fossil remains of similar organisms on widely disparate continents support
the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics. Similar fossil remains,
such as those of the Triassic land reptile Lystrosaurus and the fossil
plant Glossopteris, exist in South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, and
Australia, which were the continents comprising Gondwanaland, one of the
supercontinents that broke off from Pangaea about 200 million years ago.
Another fossil type, that of the ancient reptile Mesosaurus, is only found in
southern Africa and South America. Mesosaurus was a freshwater reptile
only one meter long that could not have swum the Atlantic Ocean, indicating
that there was once a contiguous landmass that provided a habitat for it of
freshwater lakes and rivers.
Wegener found evidence of tropical plant fossils and coal deposits in the
frigid arctic near the North Pole, as well as evidence of glaciation on the
plains of Africa, suggesting a different configuration and placement of the
continents than their present one.
Wegener observed that the continents and their rock strata fit together like
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, particularly the east coast of South America and
the west coast of Africa, specifically the Karoo strata in South Africa and
Santa Catarina rocks in Brazil. South America and Africa were not the only
continents with similar geology, though. Wegener discovered that the
Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, for instance, were
geologically related to the Caledonian Mountains of Scotland. 
Wegener's Search for Scientific Truth
According to Wegener, scientists still did not appear to understand
sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling
the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter could
only be reached by combing all this evidence. Only by combing the
information furnished by all the earth sciences would there be hope to
determine "truth," that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known
facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of
probability. Further, Wegener believed that scientists always need to be
prepared for a possibility that a new discovery, no matter what science
furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw.
Wegener had faith in his theory and persisted in using an interdisciplinary
approach, drawing on the fields of geology, geography, biology, and
paleontology, believing that to be the way to strengthen his case and to keep
up the discussion about his theory. His book, "The Origins of Continents and
Oceans," also helped when it was published in multiple languages in 1922,
which brought it worldwide and ongoing attention within the scientific
community. When Wegener gained new information, he added to or revised
his theory, and published new editions. He kept the discussion of the
plausibility of the continental drift theory going until his untimely death in
1930 during a meteorologic expedition in Greenland.
The story of the continental drift theory and its contribution to scientific truth
is a fascinating example of how the scientific process works and how
scientific theory evolves. Science is based on hypothesis, theory, testing, and
interpretation of data, but the interpretation can be skewed by the perspective
of the scientist and his or her own field of specialty, or denial of facts
altogether. As with any new theory or discovery, there are those who will
resist it and those who embrace it. But through Wegener’s persistence,
perseverance, and open-mindedness to the contributions of others, the theory
of continental drift evolved into the widely accepted theory today of plate
tectonics. With any great discovery it is through the sifting of data and facts
contributed by multiple scientific sources, and ongoing refinements of the
theory, that scientific truth emerges.
Acceptance of Continental Drift Theory
the continents, ocean floors, and parts of the upper mantle. In a process
similar to that of a conveyor belt, hot rock rises from the mid-ocean ridges
and then sinks down as it cools and becomes denser, creating convection
currents that cause movement of the tectonic plates.
The theories of continental drift and plate tectonics are the foundation of
modern geology. Scientists believe that there were several supercontinents
like Pangaea that formed and broke apart over the course of Earth's 4.5-
billion year lifespan. Scientists also now recognize that Earth is constantly
changing and that even today, the continents are still moving and changing.
For example, the Himalayas, formed by the collision of the Indian plate and
the Eurasian plate is still growing, because plate tectonics is still pushing the
Indian plate into the Eurasian plate. We may even be heading toward the
creation of another supercontinent in 75-80 million years due to the
continued movement of tectonic plates.
But scientists are also realizing that plate tectonics does not work merely as a
mechanical process but as a complex feedback system, with even things such
as climate affecting the movement of the plates, creating yet another quiet
revolution in the theory of plate tectonics variable in our understanding of
our complex planet.

When Wegener died, discussion of continental drift died with him for a
while. It was resurrected, however, with the study of seismology and further
exploration of the ocean floors in the 1950s and 1960s that showed mid-
ocean ridges, evidence in the seafloor of the Earth's changing magnetic field,
and proof of seafloor spreading and mantle convection, leading to the theory
of plate tectonics. This was the mechanism that was missing in Wegener's
original theory of continental drift. By the late 1960s, plate tectonics was
commonly accepted by geologists as accurate.

But the discovery of seafloor spreading disproved a part of Wegener's theory,

because it wasn't just the continents that were moving through static oceans,
as he had originally thought, but rather entire tectonic plates, consisting of