Continental Drift

It was no mystery that Africa and South America appear to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This was observed and noted as early as 1596 by Abraham
Ortelius (Continental Drift). As time progressed, other forms of evidence emerged supporting that the continents were once joined as one. In the mid 1800’s,
Antonio Snider-Pelligrini acknowledged that the same plant fossils were in the coal beds of Europe and North America at places where the continents
seemed to have fit together geographically (Plate Tectonics: Continental Drift). With the addition of more evidence, some members of the scientific
community began to believe that the continents were in fact not fixed in place. In 1908, Frank Bursley Taylor proposed to the GSA that continents moved on
the Earth’s surface, and mountains were uplifted by continental collisions (Frank Bursley Taylor).   He based this on the geographic fit of Africa and South
America, along with research he did on their respective mountain chains (Frank Bursley Taylor). He believed that lunar gravity dragged the continents to the
equator during the Cretaceous (Continental Drift). Robert Mantovani, an Italian geologist, proposed in his works published in 1889 and 1909 that the
continents were once one single mass (Robert Mantovani). In these he described his expanding-earth theory. He proposed that the earth was originally
much smaller and that a single continent covered the entire earth (Robert Mantovani). Then, volcanic activity due to thermal expansion broke the continents
away and created the oceans (Robert Mantovani). Geologist Howard Baker provided the first detailed reconstruction of the continents as one supercontinent
(Mountain Building and Drifting Continents). His theory included that the continents broke apart, but his mechanism involved the effects of the close
approach of the planet Venus (Mountain Building and Drifting Continents). Although their mechanisms or parts of their ideas were incorrect, it was important
that geoscience probed the idea that the continents were not stationary, isolated entities.

Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, also noticed how the continents fit together. He compiled and collected considerable evidence to support this
idea (Continental Drift). He used these to introduce his idea of continental drift to the Geological Society of Germany in January of 1912 (Continental Drift).
His formal and well-supported introduction to the theory informed and split geoscientists into two opposing groups that would engage in a fifty year debate;
drifters vs. fixists. One piece of evidence Wegener provided was paleoclimatic indicators that linked South America and Africa (Plate Tectonics: Continental
Drift). He noted that glacial, tropical rain forests, and desert deposits were aligned when the continents were placed together (Plate Tectonics: Continental
Drift). The geoscience community immediately dismissed Wegener’s theory. Wegener was particularly vulnerable because he held a Ph.D. in astronomy
and was a meteorologist; therefore, he was considered to have questionable knowledge and little standing in the geologic community (Plate Tectonics:
Continental Drift). In the end, he was judged as having no expert opinion in any of the fields that he leaned on for support (Plate Tectonics: Continental
Drift). The coastal reptile Mesosaurus and the freshwater reptile Lystrosaurus both left remains in Africa and South America. Due to the specific
environments they lived in, they could not have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Fixists explained the fossil connection between continents by proposing isostatic
land bridges that once connected the continents but later sank into the ocean. Wegener had seemingly compelling evidence that the continents once formed
a supercontinent; however, he was missing a mechanism for which they moved. Wegener proposed that the continents “plowed through” the ocean floors by
means of the earth’s spin, tidal forces, and the wobble of earth’s axis (Mountain Building and Drifting Continents). Fixists argued that these forces were far
to weak to move the continents through the sea floor, which is much denser than the continents (Mountain Building and Drifting Continents).   Geophysicist
Harold Jeffries calculated that if the tides were strong enough to overcome the frictional resistance of the sea floor so that the continents could move, that
earth’s rotation would have stopped after about one year (Contracting Earth v. Continental Drift v. Plate Tectonics).

Frank Bursley Taylor

Frank Bursley Taylor (1860 – 1938) was an American geologist, the son of a lawyer in Fort Wayne, Indiana.[1] He was a Harvard dropout who studied
privately financed in large part by his wealthy father. He became a specialist in the glacial geology of the Great Lakes, and proposed to the Geological
Society of America on December 29, 1908[2] that thecontinents moved on the Earth's surface, that a shallow region in the Atlantic marks where Africa and
South America were once joined, and that the collisions of continents coulduplift mountains. His ideas were based on his studies on mountain ranges as the
Andes, Rockies, Alps and Himalayas, concluding that these mountains could have been formed only as a result of titanic lateral pressures that thrust the
earth's surface upward.[3] His theory was either ignored or opposed by other scientists of his time. [4] He wrote a total ten papers on the subject of continental
drift[1] Taylor's ideas about continental drift were independently discovered by Alfred Wegener in Germany three years later, in January 1912, and the theory
of continental drift is historically often referred to as the "Taylor-Wegener hypothesis," [1][5][6] although Taylor himself disapproved of the hyphenated name.
[7]
 But even with Wegener's extensive extra research the idea did not achieve acceptance until the 1960s when a vast weight of evidence had accrued
via Harry Hess, Fred Vine andDrummond Matthews.
In a later paper[7] he proposed that this occurred by their being dragged towards the equator by tidal forces during the hypothesized capture of the moon,
resulting in "general crustal creep" toward the equator. The initial key to his proposal, the complementary shapes of the continental masses, had been
observed as early as the 16th century byAbraham Ortelius, but had lacked a credible driving force. His own proposition was that the moon was captured by
the Earth's gravity during the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, and came so close to the earth that its tidal pull dragged the continents toward the
Equator. This lacked evidence, thus undermining the credibility of the continental drift observation. He had proposed that the continents ploughed through
the ocean floors towards the equator, wrinkling their Equator-facing fronts to produce the Himalayas and Alps. Although his proposed mechanism was
wrong, he was the first to come to the insight that one of the effects of continental motion would be the formation of mountains due to the collision of
continental plates.[5]
 Rejection of Wegener's theory, 1910s–1950s[edit]

The theory of continental drift was not accepted for many years. One problem was that a plausible driving force was missing. [2] A second problem was
that Wegener's estimate of the velocity of continental motion, 250 cm/year, was implausibly high.[32] (The currently accepted rate for the separation of the
Americas from Europe and Africa is about 2.5 cm/year).[33] And it did not help that Wegener was not a geologist. Other geologists also believed that the
evidence that Wegener had provided was not sufficient. It is now accepted that the plates carrying the continents do move across the Earth's surface,
although not as fast as Wegener believed; ironically one of the chief outstanding questions is the one Wegener failed to resolve: what is the nature of the
forces propelling the plates?[2]

The British geologist Arthur Holmes championed the theory of continental drift at a time when it was deeply unfashionable. He proposed in 1931 that the
Earth's mantle contained convection cells that dissipated radioactive heat and moved the crust at the surface. [34] His Principles of Physical Geology, ending
with a chapter on continental drift, was published in 1944. [35]

David Attenborough, who attended university in the second half of the 1940s, recounted an incident illustrating its lack of acceptance then: "I once asked
one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that could move
continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed." [36]

Geological maps of the time showed huge land bridges spanning the Atlantic and Indian oceans to account for the similarities of fauna and flora and the
divisions of the Asian continent in the Permian era but failing to account for glaciation in India, Australia and South Africa. [37]

As late as 1953 – just five years before Carey[38] introduced the theory of plate tectonics – the theory of continental drift was rejected by the physicist
Scheidegger on the following grounds.[39]

 First, it had been shown that floating masses on a rotating geoid would collect at the equator, and stay there. This would explain one, but only
one, mountain building episode between any pair of continents; it failed to account for earlier orogenic episodes.
 Second, masses floating freely in a fluid substratum, like icebergs in the ocean, should be in isostatic equilibrium (in which the forces of gravity
and buoyancy are in balance). But gravitational measurements showed that many areas are not in isostatic equilibrium.
 Third, there was the problem of why some parts of the Earth's surface (crust) should have solidified while other parts were still fluid. Various
attempts to explain this foundered on other difficulties.

Geophysicist Jack Oliver is credited with providing seismologic evidence supporting plate tectonics which encompassed and superseded continental drift
with the article "Seismology and the New Global Tectonics", published in 1968, using data collected from seismologic stations, including those he set up in
the South Pacific.[40][41]

It is now known that there are two kinds of crust: continental crust and oceanic crust. Continental crust is inherently lighter and its composition is different
from oceanic crust, but both kinds reside above a much deeper "plastic" mantle. Oceanic crust is created at spreading centers, and this, along
with subduction, drives the system of plates in a chaotic manner, resulting in continuous orogeny and areas of isostatic imbalance. The theory of plate
tectonics explains all this, including the movement of the continents, better than Wegener's theory.

Evidence of continental drift[edit]

Evidence for the movement of continents on tectonic plates is now extensive. Similar plant and animal fossils are found around the shores of different
continents, suggesting that they were once joined. The fossils of Mesosaurus, a freshwater reptile rather like a small crocodile, found both
in Brazil and South Africa, are one example; another is the discovery of fossils of the land reptile Lystrosaurus in rocks of the same age at locations
in Africa, India, and Antarctica.[42] There is also living evidence—the same animals being found on two continents. Some earthworm families (e.g.
Ocnerodrilidae, Acanthodrilidae, Octochaetidae) are found in South America and Africa, for instance.

The complementary arrangement of the facing sides of South America and Africa is obvious, but is a temporary coincidence. In millions of years, slab
pull and ridge-push, and other forces of tectonophysics, will further separate and rotate those two continents. It was this temporary feature which inspired
Wegener to study what he defined as continental drift, although he did not live to see his hypothesis generally accepted.

Widespread distribution of Permo-Carboniferous glacial sediments in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Antarctica and Australia was
one of the major pieces of evidence for the theory of continental drift. The continuity of glaciers, inferred from orientedglacial striations and deposits
called tillites, suggested the existence of the supercontinent of Gondwana, which became a central element of the concept of continental drift. Striations
indicated glacial flow away from the equator and toward the poles, based on continents' current positions and orientations, and supported the idea that the
southern continents had previously been in dramatically different locations, as well as being contiguous with each other. [14]