plate tectonicsand continental drift（板tectonicsand大陆漂移）.docVIP

12. Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift Early Ideas Sir Franis Bacon in 1620 mentioned the ideas that the two continents of Africa and South America had similar shorelines but never made the connection In 1858 Antonia Snider-Pelegrini used similarities of plant fossils in the coal beds of Europe and North America to link the continents He attributed the separation to the deluge of the Bible Said that this split the two continents An Australian geologist proposed the concept of Gondwanaland Based on Paleozoic plant fossils similarities of India, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, and South America Also used evidence of glaciation in the southern continents Gondwana is a province in India that has evidence of extensive glaciation and abundant fossils He thought that this was a consequence of rise and fall of land masses and the connection of a land bridge that had sank The American geologist Frank Taylor published his ideas of continental drift Explained the formation of mountain ranges as the lateral movement of continent He also saw the present continents as a part of a larger continent that had moved from the north pole to the equator Thought that the continents had broke apart due to gigantic tidal forces produced when the earth captured the moon 100 million years ago He did mention that the mid-Atlantic Ridge may have been the place where the continents had broke apart Alfred Wegener is generally credited with developing the hypothesis of continental drift in 1915 He proposed that all the continents were in a giant land mass called Pangea He envisioned that continents as moving around and eventually ending in their present position He amassed a lot of information to uphold his ideas but was not generally accepted Most of the problem was the mechanism was not well understood- how could granitic continents move through denser oceanic rock Alexander du Toit in 1937 further developed his ideas Used the coal deposits of the same age in the Northern continents to correl