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Evidence for continental drift bbc bitesize
The impact of the continental drift
Essay note on continental drift
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Alfred Wegener was right about the moving of the continents. His discovery was true because our new technology has gone down into the ocean to map the seafloor. Also, we can use satellite images to see how the continents are moving and at what rate they are moving per year. The shapes and other details give evidence that the continents had to have once been together. Even though every scientist on earth thought he was wrong, they were the ones that were wrong.
One way we can tell that the continents moved a long time ago is by the mountain chains forming on plate boundaries. As the plates are subducted or push alongside each other, they form mountains or volcanoes above and below the ocean surface. We can find out the plate boundaries by
The continents are moving around because of the new rock forming and spreading at the mid-atlantic ridge. The molten rock pushes up from the crack in the earth and cools in a repetitive process. As the new rock forms it has to push away the old rock, causing sea-floor spreading.
Another piece of evidence is that the same fossil remnants are found on two different continents. It couldn’t be just a coincident that the same thing is found on two different land masses thousands of miles apart. They matched up the sections where animals or plants were found and they fit together on different continents.
The fourth piece of evidence is from the way continents fit together like a puzzle piece. The continental shelfs line up almost perfectly in most places. The continental shelf is where the land drops down steeply. It wouldn’t be a coincident that South America fits perfectly into Africa. Or that australia fits into the bottom of Asia. They had to have started together in one continent.
The final explanation for Wegener’s theory is glacial remnants. Glacial debris is found by the equator in some places, which if the continent was there all along it would be impossible for a glacier to have been there. The continent had to have once been at the north or south pole for there to be glacier
15. The pictures above show how the continents on Earth’s surface have changed position over a very long period of time. What explains this change? (S6E5e, f)
To set the stage, we must go back 270 million years ago when a majority of the earth’s land masses were collected together in a single continent, a supercontinent, named Pangaea (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1). Historian Alfred Crosby explained that this collected all of earth’s land based biology into a single place, creating a single Darwinian “arena for competition” (Crosby, 1). Or in other words, one big evolutionary pot. Crosby also explains that 180 million years ago, Pangea split into two major land masses, what is now the Americas in the Western Hemisphere as one land mass and Euro-Asia and Africa as the second lass mass (Crosby, 1). What was once a single evolutionary pot, was now two, allowing for plant and animal life to take different evolutionary paths. These two worlds remained relatively separate from each other until the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers. That contact between the old world and the new world brought two distinct evolutionary arenas crashing into each other and returned a majority of the earth’s landmass into a single Darwinian pot, (Crosby, 1) This was Crosby’s re-knitting of the torn “seams of Pangaea.”
Wegener hypothesized that at one time all continents were joined together in a "supercontinent". The supercontinent eventually broke into the smaller continents, which then drifted towards their present positions. (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, n.d.)
In 1952 W. F. Libby discovered a new method for calculating the age of organic material. Many people have been led to believe that carbon dating (and other radioactive dating methods) prove the Earth to be much older that 6000 years old (Biblical age).
...s from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic periods show proof of how animals have gone through evolution and why certain fossils look very similar. The Law of Original Horizontality and the Law of Superposition both express true when looking at modern rock layers today. The Law of Original Horizontality happens when sediments are constantly deposited over old layers of rock forming new layers over millions of years, while the Law of Superposition is the law that older rock layers lie beneath the newer layers. Also, Pangea and Panthalassa are now the seven continents and four oceans of the world today as a result of Continental Drift. All things considered, Rock layers are therefore evidence of Evolution for, rock layers holds proof of evolving animals seen through fossils, the plates in the earth separated Pangea, and the relation of evolution and rock layers.
Rock formations on continents across the atlantic ocean were found to acquire similarities. The Appalachian Mountains in the United States share similar features with rocks in Greenland and Europe. These mountain ranges were formed 200 million years ago which support the theory that the continents were once joined. These structures were at one time connected, sharing a common land due to the similar ages, formation of Earth’s crust and type of rock. It is due to the drift of these continents that now the rock formations and common geological structures are presently separated across
There is much evidence of population evolution. Some evidence they found of population evolution are fossils. Fossils are historical records. Over millions of years ago land eroded and was carried away by rivers and ended up in the bottoms of oceans compressing older deposits into the rock. Dead organisms settled along the
...misphere. Evidence obtained from fossils in modern day laboratories are much more accurate, and only add to the possibility that Wegener’s theory was indeed correct. While during his lifetime, he was primarily known for his work in meteorology and polar exploration, it is his Continental Drift Theory that will make him remembered for all time.
Tectonic plate theory is a relatively new theory that has evolved over the last century. The history of the theory can date back all the way to the twentieth century. Before the 1960s a majority of geologists believed that ocean basins and continents had a fixed position and
There is also information presented in the ways that we can study the earth and what is left on our earth that explain evolution in a way that I feel like is undeniable. Examples of evolution can be seen in fossils, of layers deposited on the earth, of radiometric dating, and the Mid-Atlantic ridge. All of these different evidences lead us to believe in an old earth. A earth that has been around roughly 6.5 billion years and has changed and grown while preserving sight into our
People began to wonder what was on the other side of the Atlantic and pacific oceans. Soon discovering new worlds that expanded trade of not only resources but of also arts, ideas, inventions and clothes, new resources as well as materials that had never been used on the European continent, or vise versa in the Asian continent or what later was known as the Americas. Also with the discovery of new lands across oceans, astronomers and mathematicians also discovered a whole new universe in the sky. They discovered that the Earth was indeed not the center of the universe but that instead it was the sun and that with the earth many other planets revolved around
...t of laurasia, just like most of the other plates. North America,Europe, and Green land all used to be connect because of Pangea ( as mentioned earlier). But when everything started to separate, first europe, then green land, and lastly the North American plate. After pangea was no more and the plates all started moving, the continents started going their own ways, there fore putting the continents where they are today.
Pangaea was introduced by Wegener. He found evidence that the seven continents used to be one large continents. The evidence would be the fossils found in different continents. There is also the fact that the continents seem to fit together, the continental puzzle, that supported pangaea. In addition, the Andes Mountains and other mountains that go nowhere are also evidence of pangaea.
Continental drift is the theory that the continents moved or split into smaller continents that we have today. That is the reason we think is that we find plant and animal fossils that originated and lived in different continents are found on the other side of the world than were we thought they lived.
The Shifting of Pangea Have you ever noticed that a map of the world looks like a puzzle and the continents look like the pieces that would fit together to complete the puzzle. In 1912, Alfred Wegener, a German scientist and an adventurer, came up with a theory that the continents had once been part of a “supercontinent”. Wegener proposed that, over 200 million years, what he called Pangea had separated and became individual pieces. Pangea means “all lands” in Greek, and that is what Pangea was, a very large landmass when all of the continents were connected.