Different rock structures are found on different continents. ... Wegener believed that continental drift explained fossils of tropical plants found in places that today have a polar climate. true. Deposits of coal have been found beneath the ice of Antarctica .
How did fossils help Wegener explain continental drift to be true?
Wegener used fossil evidence to support his continental drift hypothesis. The fossils of these organisms are found on lands that are now far apart. ... Wegener suggested that these creatures were alive in warm climate zones and that the fossils and coal later had drifted to new locations on the continents .
What is Wegener’s theory?
Alfred Wegener in Greenland. Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth’s land masses are in constant motion . The realization that Earth’s land masses move was first proposed by Alfred Wegener, which he called continental drift.
How did Wegener explain the fossils of plants and animals found on different continents?
Continental drift was a theory that explained how continents shift position on Earth’s surface. Set forth in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, a geophysicist and meteorologist, continental drift also explained why look-alike animal and plant fossils, and similar rock formations, are found on different continents.
How does continental drift explain fossils of tropical plants found in Antarctica?
Evidence from climate changes .
As a continent moves toward the poles, its climate gets colder. In either case, the continent carries along with it the fossils and rocks that formed at all of its previous locations. Fossils of tropical plants were found on Spitsbergen, an island in the Arctic Ocean.
What caused Pangea to break up?
About 180 million years ago the supercontinent Pangea began to break up. Scientists believe that Pangea broke apart for the same reason that the plates are moving today. The movement is caused by the convection currents that roll over in the upper zone of the mantle .
Why did Pangea break up?
One camp believes the continents were dragged apart by the movement of tectonic plates driven by forces elsewhere. The other group believes that hot material from deeper underground forced its way up and pushed the continents apart.
Why was Wegener’s theory rejected first?
Wegener also suggested that India drifted northward into the asian continent thus forming the Himalayas. ... This idea was quickly rejected by the scientific community primarily because the actual forces generated by the rotation of the earth were calculated to be insufficient to move continents .
What are the 5 evidences of continental drift theory?
They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils .
What are the 3 theories of plate tectonics?
The three types of plate boundaries are divergent, convergent, and transform . They are described in the following three concepts. Most geological activity takes place at plate boundaries.
What does Pangaea mean in Greek?
Pangea was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa, and it was fully assembled by the Early Permian Epoch (some 299 million to 273 million years ago). ... Its name is derived from the Greek pangaia, meaning “all the Earth .”
Are continents floating?
The continents do not float on a sea of molten rock . ... Under the continents is a layer of solid rock known as the upper mantle or asthenosphere. Though solid, this layer is weak and ductile enough to slowly flow under heat convection, causing the tectonic plates to move.
How do we know Pangea existed?
The rock formations of eastern North America, Western Europe, and northwestern Africa were later found to have a common origin, and they overlapped in time with the presence of Gondwanaland. Together, these discoveries supported the existence of Pangea. ... Modern geology has shown that Pangea did actually exist .
How did the continents used to fit together?
The continents fit together like pieces of a puzzle. ... Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents were once united into a single supercontinent named Pangaea , meaning all earth in ancient Greek. He suggested that Pangaea broke up long ago and that the continents then moved to their current positions.
What was the response to Wegener’s hypothesis?
“That was always his response: Just assert it again, even more strongly .” By the time Wegener published the final version of his theory, in 1929, he was certain it would sweep other theories aside and pull together all the accumulating evidence into a unifying vision of the earth’s history.
Did the continents used to be connected?
The idea of continental drift was the forerunner of the theory of plate tectonics. ... The word Pangaea means “All Lands”, this describes the way all the continents were joined up together. Pangea existed 240 million years ago and about 200 millions years ago it began to break apart.
