The theory is a lot younger than I would have thought, only about 50 years ago, apparently.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41472281

I was reading Scientific American around that time (or a tad later, probably as I was 8 in 1967. I did read SciAm during my teens because Dad subscribed). I would have thought earlier, but if you read the piece carefully, the idea had been gelling for some 60 years before everyone rushed to publish.

On the other hand, the basic idea that the continents were moving about, and specifically that the continents on other side of the Atlantic were once in contact, is hundreds of years old. It wasn’t until the 1960s that some kind of well-supported theory about how this could have happened developed.

It’s weird though because most large scale processes on Earth are driven by plate tectonics. How come the mountains haven’t eroded yet? Plate tectonics. What’s driving the creation of new rock and why isn’t there much “old” rock? Plate tectonics.

Alfred Lothar Wegener (1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist.

During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift by hypothesizing in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: Kontinentalverschiebung). His hypothesis was controversial and not widely accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today’s model of plate tectonics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener

Continental drift theory

Alfred Wegener first thought of this idea by noticing that the different large landmasses of the Earth almost fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The Continental shelf of the Americas fit closely to Africa and Europe, and Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar fitted next to the tip of Southern Africa. But Wegener only published his idea after reading a paper in 1911 which criticized the prevalent hypothesis, that a bridge of land once connected Europe and America, on the grounds that this contradicts isostasy. Wegener’s main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid-1912. He presented his Continental Drift hypothesis on 6 January 1912. He analyzed both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for rock type, geological structures and fossils. He noticed that there was a significant similarity between matching sides of the continents, especially in fossil plants.

From 1912, Wegener publicly advocated the existence of “continental drift”, arguing that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and had since drifted apart. He supposed that the mechanisms causing the drift might be the centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation (“Polflucht”) or the astronomical precession. Wegener also speculated on sea-floor spreading and the role of the mid-ocean ridges, stating: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge … zone in which the floor of the Atlantic, as it keeps spreading, is continuously tearing open and making space for fresh, relatively fluid and hot sima from depth. However, he did not pursue these ideas in his later works.

In 1915, in the first edition of his book, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, written in German (the first English edition was published in 1924 as The Origin of Continents and Oceans, a translation of the 1922 third German edition), Wegener drew together evidence from various fields to advance the theory that there had once been a giant continent which he named “Urkontinent” (German for “primal continent”, analogous to the Greek “Pangaea”, meaning “All-Lands” or “All-Earth”). Expanded editions during the 1920s presented further evidence. The last German edition, published in 1929, revealed the significant observation that shallower oceans were geologically younger. It was, however, not translated into English until 1962.
Wegener during J.P. Koch’s Expedition 1912–1913 in the winter base “Borg”.
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Peak Warming Man said:

The theory is a lot younger than I would have thought, only about 50 years ago, apparently.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41472281

The Internet Archive of the Original PBS Series “The Making of A Continent”

The Making of a Continent: Part 1: Corridors of Time
https://archive.org/details/themakingofacontinentpart1corridorsoftimereel1

Bon Appétit :-D

Ogmog said:

Peak Warming Man said:

The theory is a lot younger than I would have thought, only about 50 years ago, apparently.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41472281

The Internet Archive of the Original PBS Series “The Making of A Continent”

The Making of a Continent: Part 1: Corridors of Time
https://archive.org/details/themakingofacontinentpart1corridorsoftimereel1

Bon Appétit :-D

Thanks, very good even though the music track is pretty much rogered.

I just heard Sir Humphry Appleby saying that if it ever came to pass that the meek inherited the earth it would be a disaster for the defence budget.

Peak Warming Man said:

Thanks, very good even though the music track is pretty much rogered.

Perhaps the YouTUBE copies are of better quality(?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUhf1HE_3s8

buffy said:

I was reading Scientific American around that time (or a tad later, probably as I was 8 in 1967. I did read SciAm during my teens because Dad subscribed). I would have thought earlier, but if you read the piece carefully, the idea had been gelling for some 60 years before everyone rushed to publish.

> I was reading Scientific American around that time (or a tad later, probably as I was 8 in 1967. I did read SciAm during my teens because Dad subscribed).

ditto, ditto, also New Scientist.

The smoking gun was the matching of the coastline of Africa to that of South America at the ? fathom mark.

I used to know someone who was in the group at Cambridge at the time that this match was used as a first test for their brand new computer EDSAC 1 in 1949 or shortly after. The statistical significance of the match between coastlines is astounding – way closer than could have been possible without sea floor spreading.