Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The Movement of our Great Continents


100 million years ago Pangaea broke apart. The continents as we know them as today broke apart of what used to be one giant land mass and turned into seven different ones. What caused these landmasses to break apart was tectonic activity, causing the continents to move and break apart, and form what the continents look like today. Even today the continents are still drifting and will look completely different 100 million years from now. This whole idea of continental drift was created by Alfred Wegener.

Alfred Wegener’s Theory of continental drift was backed up with analysis of the shape of the continents."Doesn't the east coast of South America fit up perfectly with the west coast of Africa as if they had once been together." But also with the discovery of fossils, and example of this would be the discovery of the fossils of warm weather animals on what is now antarctica. Another was the discovery of a animal originally from Africa on the continent of what is now South Africa. There are still signs of Continental Drift even today, such as earthquakes.

Continental Drift did not just change the position of our continents but also the climates of the continents.  The movement of the continents to different positions relative to the equator can cause major temperature differences.  Evidence of this would be the discovery of fossils of a tropical plant on the continent of Antartica, showing how it had once been in more warmer part of the world.




Videos

http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/animate/A08.gif







References

Rutledge, K., Mcdaniel, M., Boudreau, D., Ramroop, T., Tang, S., Sprout, E., . .
. Hunt, J. (n.d.). Continental drift (K. West & J. Evers, Ed.). Retrieved
from National Geographic website: http://education.nationalgeographic.com/
education/encyclopedia/continental-drift/?ar_a=1

Sant, Joseph (2014). Wegener and Continental Drift Theory.Retrieved from http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html


Continental drift. gif [Video file]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/animate/A08.gif











2 comments:

  1. Wow, that is really cool

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  2. Whit, do take care with your use of prove. Recall that scientific theories are never proven. The fossil findings were explained by Wegner's theory, and therefore one could say they support his theory. But no proof!

    ReplyDelete