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Science-Related Homework Help Geography and Earth Sciences Topic started by: ggull329 on Jan 23, 2018



Title: What are the lines of evidence that Alfred Wegener used to support the idea of continental drift? ...
Post by: ggull329 on Jan 23, 2018
What are the lines of evidence that Alfred Wegener used to support the idea of continental drift? Why did scientists of his day doubt that continents drifted?
 
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Title: What are the lines of evidence that Alfred Wegener used to support the idea of continental drift? ...
Post by: meek2199 on Jan 23, 2018
Alfred Wegener was the first scientist to advance the idea of mobile continents in 1912. Wegener proposed that the continents slowly drift across Earth's surface. Although this idea was not new, the development of better maps by the early 1900s suggested to Wegener that the shapes of matching shorelines on different continents suggested that the continents moved or drifted over geologic time. Several lines of evidence supported the idea of continental drift, namely: matching sequences of rocks and mountain chains; glacial ages and other climate evidence; and the distribution of organisms, including extant organisms and fossilized remains. The main objection from the scientific community centered on the mechanism that Wegener proposed for the movement of continents: gravitational attraction and tidal forces.