GLG 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Seafloor Spreading, Oceanic Crust, Deep Sea
Document Summary
Alfred wagner theory continental drift all continents drifted apart/together ence of continental drift: The jigsaw puzzle similarities between coastlines on opposite sides of oceans match/fit together well. Similar fossils are found on continents that are separated by vast oceans. Mountain belts found on one continent should share similar ages to those found in the juxtaposed continent and they do. He argues that appalachian mountain belt in the eastern us should match mountains found in greenland and they do. Glacial materials matched up as glaciers move they scratch the rocks underneath them. Wagner published a book critics required a mechanism to drive the movements of the continents wagner didn"t explain how or why the continents drifted. By 1960s new developments propelled the continental drift hypothesis towards theory of plate tectonics. Theory that states the earths lithosphere is broken into many different tectonic plates that float on the asthenosphere and those large pieces of lithosphere move relatively to each other over time.
