ERS103H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Plate Tectonics, Polar Wander, Meteorology
Document Summary
Hypothesized that the continents used to fit together as a single supercontinent he named pangea. People mocked him and didn"t believe him because his writing was bad and wegener couldn"t explain how continental drift occurs. The distribution of permian glacial deposits and striations. We can tell clearly where glaciers were. Glaciers were forming on land, and moving into the oceans. Late paleozoic rocks preserve evidence of ancient climate belts. Climate belts align in a sensible manner, like the belts of earth today . Similar types of fossils are found in continents that are currently separated by large oceans. The edges of continents are similar (shaped like a puzzle) The evidence was impressive, one thing was missing: a mechanism to explain the movement of continents. They are a means of explaining how continental drift happens. We started looking at older rocks at different times. We figured out that the north pole has moved several times.