Mondo Knows Facts
Wegener proposed that continents drift
Matching fossils and coastlines convinced him, but he lacked a mechanism Alfred Wegener argued in 1912 that the continents had once been joined in a single landmass he called Pangaea. Similar rocks, fossils and glacial marks on opposite sides of the Atlantic supported the idea. Geologists rejected it for decades because nobody could explain how continents move. It sits in Mondo's science collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
India colliding with Asia raised the HimalayaThe impact crumpled crust upward and the mountains are still risingSubduction recycles old ocean floorDense seafloor sinks into the mantle and its water triggers volcanic arcsSeafloor spreading builds new ocean crustMagma rises at mid ocean ridges and pushes the older plates outwardIceland is a landmass where tectonic plates drift apart above sea levelIceland sits directly atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates diverge.The Great Rift Valley is a continuous trench splitting East AfricaExtending over 6,000 kilometres from the Middle East to Mozambique, the rift is slowly splitting Africa.The San Andreas is a transform faultTwo plates slide past each other sideways, which is why the fault produces quakes
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Tags: geology, tectonics, history
Wegener proposed that continents drift: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Matching fossils and coastlines convinced him, but he lacked a mechanism. The figure is taken from British Geological Survey, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a science fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Science shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.