What's Today's Version of the Continental Drift Theory?

摘要

The history of science is littered with true stories of individuals who made important discoveries, but whose discoveries were not accepted as legitimate during their lifetimes. One such scientist was Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), who was born in Berlin and who obtained a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Berlin. But Wegener is best known today for his theory of continental drift, which is now accepted as fact, but which was considered outlandish when he first proposed it at the 1926 American Association of Petroleum Geologists conference in New York City.As Chris Woodford wrote in the 2019 Dorling Kindersley book Scientists Who Changed History, Wegener "began questioning why the continents are shaped the way they are. He had noticed that the coastlines of western Africa and eastern South America mirrored each other, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and he wondered if they had once been joined together. In fact, he wondered if all of the Earth's continents had once been linked. He was not the first to notice the Africa-America pattern: it had been observed as early as the 16th century, and discoveries in the 19th century of the same types of fossils in both places had also attracted attention. Previous explanations included that the continents had been separated by the biblical Flood or that they were once joined by land bridges that had since sunk into the sea."