What evidence supports Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis?
fossil evidence Wegener used fossil evidence to support his continental drift hypothesis. The fossils of these organisms are found on lands that are now far apart. Grooves and rock deposits left by ancient glaciers are found today on different continents very close to the equator.
What three evidence supports Wegener’s theory?
The Theory of Continental Drift was proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. He used several pieces of evidence to support his theory including fossils, rocks, glacial markings, coal deposits and the fact that the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. .
What are the 5 evidences of continental drift theory?
They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
What are the 4 evidences of continental drift?
The four pieces of evidence for the continental drift include continents fitting together like a puzzle, scattering ancient fossils, rocks, mountain ranges, and the old climatic zones' locations.
What were the 4 main evidence of continental drift?
The four pieces of evidence for the continental drift include continents fitting together like a puzzle, scattering ancient fossils, rocks, mountain ranges, and the old climatic zones' locations.
Why was Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis rejected?
The main reason that Wegener's hypothesis was not accepted was because he suggested no mechanism for moving the continents. He thought the force of Earth's spin was sufficient to cause continents to move, but geologists knew that rocks are too strong for this to be true.
What evidence is there to support the theory of plate tectonics?
There is variety of evidence that supports the claims that plate tectonics accounts for (1) the distribution of fossils on different continents, (2) the occurrence of earthquakes, and (3) continental and ocean floor features including mountains, volcanoes, faults, and trenches.
What theory supports continental drift?
Plate tectonics Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's land masses are in constant motion. The realization that Earth's land masses move was first proposed by Alfred Wegener, which he called continental drift.
What is the evidence for continental drift quizlet?
Fossils of same creature have been found on different continents that are separated today but were once joined. For example. a 20 cm Mesosaurus reptile could not have swam 3000 miles across and ocean. It's more likely the continents were together and over 40 million years it walked.
When was Wegener’s theory accepted?
The drifting of tectonic plates is an on-going process that has changed the configuration of the continents since their formation in Archean time. This hypothesis first proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, a German Meteorologist, was not widely accepted until after 1960.
What evidence did scientists use for continental drift?
The four pieces of evidence for the continental drift include continents fitting together like a puzzle, scattering ancient fossils, rocks, mountain ranges, and the old climatic zones' locations.
What are the 5 evidences of plate movement?
There is variety of evidence that supports the claims that plate tectonics accounts for (1) the distribution of fossils on different continents, (2) the occurrence of earthquakes, and (3) continental and ocean floor features including mountains, volcanoes, faults, and trenches.
How did Alfred Wegener discover continental drift?
Wegener noticed the similarity in the coastlines of eastern South America and western Africa and speculated that those lands had once formed a supercontinent, Pangaea, which had split and slowly moved many miles apart over geologic time.
What evidence did Wegener find for Pangaea quizlet?
Wegener showed that certain types of rocks on the continents would match with others in another continent. What did Wegener realize about the oldest rocks on the Afircan and South American continents? That they were connected together when the continents were arranged to form Pangaea.
Who was Alfred Wegener and what was his hypothesis quizlet?
Wegeners hypothesis was that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and have since drifted apart. Wegener gathered evidence from different scientific fields to support his ideas about continental drift. He studied land features, fossils, and evidence of climate change.
Which statement best supports the theory of continental drift?
One type of evidence that strongly supported the Theory of Continental Drift is the fossil record. Fossils of similar types of plants and animals in rocks of a similar age have been found on the shores of different continents, suggesting that the continents were once joined.
What evidence is there for continental drift?
The four pieces of evidence for the continental drift include continents fitting together like a puzzle, scattering ancient fossils, rocks, mountain ranges, and the old climatic zones' locations.
What evidence is given for continental plate movement?
Modern continents hold clues to their distant past. Evidence from fossils, glaciers, and complementary coastlines helps reveal how the plates once fit together. Fossils tell us when and where plants and animals once existed.
What was Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis?
Wegener's continental drift theory introduced the idea of moving continents to geoscience. He proposed that Earth (opens in new tab) must have once been a single supercontinent before breaking up to form several different continents.
What evidence supports Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis quizlet?
What evidence supported the hypothesis of continental drift? How did fossils provide evidence for continental drift? Similar fossils occur on different continents. Because many of these organisms could not have crossed an ocean, this provides evidence that the continents were once connected.
What evidence exists to support the existence of Pangea 3 points?
The rock formations of eastern North America, Western Europe, and northwestern Africa were later found to have a common origin, and they overlapped in time with the presence of Gondwanaland. Together, these discoveries supported the existence of Pangea.
What evidence supports Wegener’s initial ideas about continental drift which later became the theory of plate tectonics?
Wegener's first piece of evidence was that the coastlines of some continents fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. People noticed the similarities in the coastlines of South America and Africa on the first world maps, and some suggested the continents had been ripped apart (3).
What evidence supports the idea that all the continents were once joined together?
There are various examples of fossils found on separate continents and in no other regions. This indicates that these continents had to be once joined together because the extensive oceans between these land masses act as a type of barrier for fossil transfer.
What discovery provided strong support for continental drift?
Increased knowledge about the configuration of the ocean floor and the subsequent formulation of the concepts of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics provided further support for continental drift.
What evidence was discovered and used to help support the theory of continental drift?
Fossils of similar organisms across widely disparate continents encouraged the revolutionary theory of continental drift. Continental drift describes one of the earliest ways geologists thought continents moved over time. Today, the theory of continental drift has been replaced by the science of plate tectonics.
What are 5 pieces of evidence that support continental drift?
The four pieces of evidence for the continental drift include continents fitting together like a puzzle, scattering ancient fossils, rocks, mountain ranges, and the old climatic zones' locations.
What are the 5 evidences of continental drift?
They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
What evidence did you consider in determining which continental boundaries be joined?
Evidence from fossils, glaciers, and complementary coastlines helps reveal how the plates once fit together. Fossils tell us when and where plants and animals once existed.
What evidence supports the claim of Earth’s continents?
Which evidence supports the claim that Earth's continents formed during Precambrian time? Earth's surface cooled, causing rocks to cool and harden. Why is radioactive dating important when approximating the age of Earth? Scientists can determine the order of when rocks formed on Earth.
What evidence best supports the plate tectonic theory?
Evidence from fossils, glaciers, and complementary coastlines helps reveal how the plates once fit together. Fossils tell us when and where plants and animals once existed.