What was Wegener's continental-drift hypothesis? (A)

Alfred Wegener's groundbreaking hypothesis began with the idea of a supercontinent named Pangaea. This immense landmass is believed to have included all the Earth's continents, which were connected as a single entity approximately 300 million years ago. The term 'Pangaea' itself comes from Ancient Greek, meaning 'all lands', a fitting name for this monolithic prehistoric continent.

The concept of Pangaea is crucial to understanding the geological history of our planet. It's like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together to form a complete picture. Over time, due to the movement of tectonic plates, Pangaea started to break apart. This division led to the formation of the continents as we know them today. Studying the shapes of the continents, geologists observed how South America and Africa, for example, appear to be complementary pieces that were once joined together.

Imagine the Earth's surface is like a cracked shell of a hard-boiled egg. The large pieces of this shell represent 'tectonic plates.' These plates are massive slabs of the Earth's lithosphere, floating on a semi-fluid layer beneath them called the asthenosphere.

The lithosphere includes the crust and the upper mantle, and it's broken into multiple plates, including both continental and oceanic ones. Tectonic plates are constantly moving, albeit at a very slow rate - about the same rate that fingernails grow! The movement of these plates is responsible for a number of geological phenomena, such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, and the creation of mountain ranges.

So, what causes the tectonic plates to move? The answer lies deep beneath the Earth's crust, in the swirling motion of molten rock in the Earth's mantle. These movements are known as 'convection currents.' Heat from the core of the Earth causes this hot magma to rise toward the crust where it cools, then sinks back down to be reheated and rise again.

These currents create a churning action that acts like a conveyor belt for the tectonic plates sitting atop the mantle. The constant upwelling and sinking of material in the mantle exert a force on the plates, pushing and pulling them in different directions.

The Mid-Ocean Ridges

Seafloor spreading is a process intimately connected with the movement of tectonic plates. At the mid-ocean ridges — underwater mountain ranges at the borders of oceanic plates — magma from the mantle upwells to create new oceanic crust. As this magma cools and solidifies, it adds fresh material to the edges of the tectonic plates.

Imagine a conveyor belt coming out from the ridge, adding more belt material at the center and pushing the older material aside. This continual addition of new crust causes the ocean floors to 'spread,' moving apart at these ridges, and allowing for the creation of new oceanic crust. This is the fundamental process that Wegener believed contributed to continental drift.

Wegener's hypothesis gained substantial evidence from the distribution of fossils across continents. The existence of similar fossils on widely separated lands suggests that these areas were once connected. For example, identical fossil species of the plant Glossopteris and the freshwater reptile Mesosaurus have been found in South America, Africa, and Antarctica.

This indicates that these organisms once lived on a single landmass where they could roam freely, which supports the idea of the continents being united as Pangaea. Wegener used this fossil distribution as a pivotal part of his argument, showing that it was unlikely for the same species to develop independently on different continents without any physical connection between them.