The Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Pacific coast of North America and the Andes on the coast of South America were cited. Wegener also suggested that India drifted northward into the Asian continent thus forming the Himalayas. Many other scientist provided evidence toward this theory of a “continental jigsaw”, this evidence included geological matches in the rock type on two different continents coastlines found thousands of miles away e.g. Scotland and Canada and South America and Africa. Fossil evidence was also provided; trilobites of the same species found in Canada and Scotland and also, coal deposits were located in Antarctica.
Theory of continental drift The hypothesis that the continents had once formed a single land mass before breaking apart and drifting to there present locations was first presented by Alfred Wenger. He believed that the continents were once joined in a super continent that scientists now call Pangaea. Over a vast period of time the continents drifted apart due to the earth’s rotation. In 1915 he published a book about his theory. His main evidence was the continents appear to have a jigsaw like fit, the west coast of Africa and South America have the same pattern of rock layers and have the same plant and animal fossils; some of these animals are only found in those parts of the world and their fossils show they could not swim.
Plate tectonics (also known as the conveyor belt principle) is a scientific theory that describes the large-scale motions of the Earth’s lithosphere, building on concepts from the theory of continental drift (movement of the Earth’s continents relative to each other). The lithosphere is broken up into 7 main tectonic plates which move from 0-100mm annually. It is thought that the continents once formed a single land mass called Pangea that drifted apart, this is the start of the main idea of plate tectonics. In 1596, Abraham Ortelius first made the speculation that continents might have ‘drifted’ but the concept was developed further by Alfred Wegener in 1912. Presently, Earth Scientists agree on the observation and assumption that the plates have moved with respect to one another, but they still debate as to how and when.
Plate tectonics was first suggested as a theory by the geologist Alfred Wegener in 1915 when he proposed the concept of continental drift. Back in the geological past, what is now South America, Africa, Australasia and Antarctica fitted together into a supercontinent known as Gondwanaland; with North America, Europe and Asia fitting into another supercontinent known as Laurasia. (OCR AS/A2 Geology, Mugglestone et al, 2008). These were once believed to be joined to form one major central global landmass known as Pangaea (Introducing Geology, Graham Park). But now due to the global distribution of these major plates it has been proposed by Wegener and his successors that convection currents in the mantle are the cause of the movement of plates.
Wenger’s proposition was that the continents were slowly moving along with tectonic plates and that was why they shifted position on the earths surface, the evidence to support his theory was the same plant fossils and similar rock formations all found on different continents. Wenger believed that the continents had once formed to make one whole continent known as Pangea, which is Greek for ‘all the lands’. According to Wenger’s theory Pangea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago and eventually fragmented into the continents we know
It wasn’t until Alfred Wegener (1912) presented his theory of continental drift that a reasonable explanation was available. As this theory gained acceptance, although slowly at first, through the 20th century geologists were able to gather evidence to produce maps showing the arrangement of the Earth’s major continents at different periods of its history. These paleo-maps are of great importance for those who study evolution, as the presence and break-up of so called ‘super-continents’ in the past offered an explanation to the disjointed distributions of many terrestrial animals, both extant and fossils. Scientists pre-Wegener postulated that sister clades somehow travelled across large oceans, via land-bridges that are geologically improbable, to explain their presence in both Africa and S. America. What was now a possibility is that these animals were simply on the opposite sides of one continent as it split down the middle to form the Atlantic Ocean.
The Era is made up of six Geologic periods, the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and the Permian. Much of the plants and animals that exististed and evolved was due to the climate and location of the continents. At the beginning of the Paleozoic period, the continents were far apart, but by the end they were close together and on the way in forming the supercontinent called Pangaea. The land was moving by Plate Tectonics. Four hundred and thirty million years ago there was glaciation; this caused an ice sheet to cover what is now North Africa.
Our rotating reference frame is the earth, and its large mass and slow rotations the force is quite small. But because of this flowing winds and currents move clockwise from their direction to the north of the equator and counterclockwise to the south (it is also why you will never find two toilets that flows in the same direction from different hemispheres. By creating a similarity in flow wind patterns begin to emerge, and so do the beginnings of ocean currents. But lets look at the place where wind and ocean meet, the oceans surface. From this point we can take a better examination on how the Corioles forms ocean currents.
The underlying ideas that Wilson built his theory on were proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 with his Theory of Continental Drift. Tuzo Wilson was able to provide a way to explain how the continents were able to move apart that Wegener could not explain when he had proposed his idea. Scientists had believed that based on the evidence Wegener had provided it did appear that all of the present day continents had somehow been connected together. The way that the coasts of Africa and South America appear to fit together nicely in addition to fossil evidence of large tortoises and other animals being found near the edges of the continents. Alfred could not explain how the huge masses of land could have moved so far.
Tectonic Plates:- The movement of Continental plates, furthermore renowned as Tectonic Plates, is renowned as “Tectonic Movement”. It is a technical theory that recounts the large-scale movement of Earth's lithosphere i.e. the outer layer of earth. Geologically, the outer layer of earth, which is also renowned as “Crust”, is divided into “lithosphere” and “Asthenosphere”. This is founded on dissimilarities in mechanical properties and in the procedure for the transfer of heat.