Table of Contents
What evidence did mountains on different continents provide Wegener on continental drift?
The similarities between the Appalachian and the eastern Greenland mountain ranges are evidences for the continental drift hypothesis. Ancient fossils of the same species of extinct plants and animals are found in rocks of the same age but are on continents that are now widely separated (figure 3).
How did all the continents fit together?
Wegener suggested that perhaps the rotation of the Earth caused the continents to shift towards and apart from each other. Today, we know that the continents rest on massive slabs of rock called tectonic plates. The plates are always moving and interacting in a process called plate tectonics.
How did Alfred Wegener explain why there were the same mountains on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean?
Wegener said the rocks had formed side-by-side and that the land had since moved apart. Mountain ranges with the same rock types, structures, and ages are now on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He suggested that the organisms would not have been able to travel across the oceans.
How do we know that the continents were once joined together?
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.
What did Canadian John Tuzo Wilson figure out that finally proved Wegener’s theory?
Tuzo Wilson: Discovering transforms and hotspots. Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson was also pivotal in advancing the plate-tectonics theory. He suggested that the Hawaiian and other volcanic island chains may have formed due to the movement of a plate over a stationary “hotspot” in the mantle.
What was Arthur Holmes theory?
Holmes primary contribution was his proposed theory that convection occurred within the Earth’s mantle, which explained the push and pull of continent plates together and apart. He also assisted scientists in oceanographic research in the 1950s, which publicized the phenomenon known as sea floor spreading.
Who introduced seafloor spreading?
Harry Hess
What did Arthur Holmes show in 1929?
continental drift theory In 1929 Holmes proposed an alternative mechanism—convection of the mantle—which remains today a serious candidate for the force driving the plates. Wegener’s ideas also were well…