RLAF+1.3

toc

Vocabulary

 * Pangea**: means all lands or that all continents were together
 * Continental Drift:** moving of the continents apart
 * Fossil:** a trace of ancient organism that has been preserved in rock

Introduction

 * Africa and South America looked like a jigsaw puzzle pieces that could fit together

The Theory of Continental Drift

 * 1910 Alfred Wegner
 * his hypothesis that was that the continents were once combined together and made up a super continent called Pangaea
 * he thought that this happened over 300 million years ago
 * he wrote a book called The Origin of Continents and Oceans that was published in 1915

Evidence from Landforms

 * Mountains lined up in south Africa and Argentina
 * European coal fields were similar to the ones in North America

Evidence from Fossils

 * found reptile fossils and plant fossils that were the same around the world

Evidence from Climate

 * different places in the world have very different climate
 * hot places had rock scratches that could only have been made by glaciers

Scientists Reject Wegner's Theory

 * Wegner didn't have a very good reason how the continental drift happened

Back To RLAF Homepage