CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY
&
SEA FLOOR SPREADING
Wegener's theory
Based in part on what appeared to him to be the remarkable
fit of the South American and African continents, first
noted by Abraham Ortelius three centuries earlier. Wegener
was also intrigued by the occurrences of unusual geologic
structures and of plant and animal fossils found on the
matching coastlines of South America and Africa, which
are now widely separated by the Atlantic Ocean. He
reasoned that it was physically impossible for most of these
organisms to have swum or have been transported across
the vast oceans. To him, the presence of identical fossil
species along the coastal parts of Africa and South America
was the most compelling evidence that the two continents
were once joined.
Visionary
Alfred Wegener's greatest
contribution to the scientific
world was his ability to
weave seemingly dissimilar,
unrelated facts into a theory,
which was remarkably
visionary for the time.
Wegener was one of the first
to realize that an
understanding of how the
Earth works required input
and knowledge from all the
Earth Sciences.
Alfred Wegener Biography
Wegener obtained his doctorate in planetary astronomy
in 1905 but soon became interested in meteorology;
during his lifetime, he participated in several
meteorologic expeditions to Greenland. Tenacious by
nature, Wegener spent much of his adult life vigorously
defending his theory of continental drift, which was
severely attacked from the start and never gained
acceptance in his lifetime. Despite overwhelming
criticism from most leading geologists, who regarded
him as a mere meteorologist and outsider meddling in
their field, Wegener did not back down but worked even
harder to strengthen his theory.
The Wrath of Science
The international geological community's reaction to Wegener's
theory was militantly hostile. American geologist Frank Taylor
had published a similar theory in 1910, but most of his
colleagues had simply ignored it. Wegener's more cogent and
comprehensive work, however, was impossible to ignore and
ignited a firestorm of rage and rancor. Moreover, most of the
blistering attacks were aimed at Wegener himself, an outsider
who seemed to be attacking the very foundations of geology.
"Utter, damned rot!" said the president of
the prestigious American Philosophical
Society.
"If we are to believe this hypothesis, we
must forget everything we have learned
in the last 70 years and start all over
again," said another American scientist.
Anyone who "valued his reputation for
scientific sanity" would never dare
support such a theory, said a British
geologist.
Thus did most in the scientific community
ridicule the concept that would
revolutionize the earth sciences and
revile the man who dared to propose it,
German meteorological pioneer and
polar explorer Alfred Wegener. Science
historians compare his story with the
tribulations of Galileo.
Mantle Convection
Beginning just after Wegener’s end, Arthur Holmes began to
describe mantle heat flow in terms of convection.
Deep materials, hotter than their surroundings (and hence
buoyant), would tend to flow upward. In approaching the
cool surface of the Earth, the material would lose its thermal
energy, cool and sink, having lost buoyancy.
The motion of mantle material put into action by convection
thus becomes a plausible mechanism for moving rigid
pieces of the crust over some more actively flowing mantle
material.
Evidence from the Oceans
World War II brought a spectacular advance in our abilities to
study the ocean.
Among the discoveries were:
– Heat-flow measurements
– Thickness of the oceanic crust
– Thickness and age of sedimentary deposits on the ocean
floor.
– Earthquakes along ridges, trenches.
– Very large fractures, most of them faults.
Wegener observed a much better alignment of regions of Permo-
Carboniferous glaciation in the southern hemisphere when the continents
were in the reconstructed positions for Gondwanaland instead of their
present positions.
His reconstruction of Pangaea brought Carboniferous coal deposits into
alignment and suggested that the positions of the continents relative to the
Paleozoic equator were quite different from their modern ones.
Together with W.Köppen, a fellow German meteorologist, he assembled
paleoclimatic data that showed the distributions of coal deposits (evidence
of moist temperate zones), salt, gypsum and desert sandstones (evidence of
dry climate) for several geological eras (Carboniferous, Permian, Eocene,
Quaternary).
When plotted on Wegener’s reconstruction maps, the paleoclimatic data for
each era formed climatic belts just like today; namely, an equatorial
tropical rain belt, two adjacent dry belts, two temperate rain belts, and two
polar ice caps
Continental Drift
• Alfred Wegener -1912
– large “supercontinent” (Pangea) existed and then splitted into
pieces
– fossil & glacial deposit evidence
• Wegener proposed a mechanism for continental drift: pushing of
the continents by gravitational forces that derived from the sun and
the moon .
• Wegener not able to provide MECHANISM for his theory
• Major mechanism later found in the OCEANS
Continental Drift: Fossil Evidence
Mesosaurus: purely freshwater reptile
Glossopteris: seeds too large to be effectively wind-transported
Glacial deposits, including
structures that indicate ice
flow, direction are located
in ancient rocks as shown
on the left.
Wegener suggested that
the pattern formed with
continents together at the
south pole.
Wegener’s ideas were strongly challenged by the
scientific community.
They suggested alternative interpretations of his
paleontological data:
Paleoclimate evidence was explained movement of the
poles rather than the continents.
Other evidence was refuted as being “coincidence” or just
being incorrect.
Errors in Wegener’s data led to easy arguments against
some conclusions.
He had predicted the North America and Europe were
moving away from each other at the rate of 250
cm/year……an impossible rate.
(we now know that they are moving apart at a rate up to 3
cm per year)
The second Biggest problem: the mechanism that
Wegener proposed was impossible and easily
demonstrated to be so.
Mid-Ocean Ridges
In 1947, a group of scientists set out to map the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge. While studying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
scientists noticed two surprising trends.
1. The sediment that covers the sea floor is thinner closer to
a ridge than it is farther from the ridge.
2. The ocean floor is very young. Rocks on land are as old
as 3.8 billion years. None of the oceanic rocks are more
than 175 million years old.
Wegener Redeemed
• Reversal patterns on the sea floor could also be
found on land. The reversals in land rocks also
matched the geomagnetic reversal time scale.
• Because the same pattern appears in rocks of the
same ages on both land and the sea floor,
scientists agreed that the magnetic patterns
showed change over time.
• The idea of sea-floor spreading provides a way for
the continents to move over the Earth’s surface.
• Sea-floor spreading was the mechanism that
verified Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift.
SUPPORT FOR CONTINENTAL DRIFT
LOCATION OF COAL DEPOSITS
Coal deposits have been found in temperate and polar
regions; however, coal is formed in tropical regions.
Ancient “cratons” within continents match up when they
are brought together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Paleomagnetism and Sea Floor Spreading
Vine and Matthews
interpreted the magnetic
stripes as products of
steady creation of new
ocean crust over geologic
time, supporting the
hypothesis of Hess.
Grocery
bar code
Last
reversal
200 Ka
Calibrated
by age-
dating of
rocks
Magnetic Reversals
Interestingly, the polarity of the magnetic field shifts every 0.5 -
1.0 Myr. That means rocks formed over time will record either
‘normal’ magnetic orientation (like today), or ‘reversed’. Since this
is a global phenomenon, these changes can be used for global
stratigraphic correlation.
We are
apparently
headed into a
polarity
reversal, to be
completed in
~3000 yr.
Taking magnetic
stratigraphy back in time
is paleomagnetism.
Polarity Epoch or Chron: A long period of time (typically of the order of 100,000 to
10,000,000 years) over which the earth's magnetic field is predominantly of one polarity.
Polarity subchron: A very short time interval (generally less than 0.1 Ma) of alternate polarity
occurring within a polarity chron, e.g. the Oldivai normal subchron within the
Matuyama reversed polarity chron.
The surprising finding was that the ocean floor
contained stripes of rock with different polarities.
Some of the stripes of ocean floor would have normal polarity, meaning that the minerals in those
rocks produced a magnetic field aligned in the same direction as the earth's present-day magnetic
field. Meanwhile, other stripes demonstrated reversed polarity or a magnetic field aligned in the
opposite direction as the earth's present-day magnetic field.
