THE CONTINENTAL DRIFT THEORY

This was the first theory that claimed that the planet’s surface is in motion, it was proposed by german meteorologist and astronomer Alfred Wegener, at the beginning of last century. At that time the most accepted theory was the world’s surface was only the skin wrapping a melting interior that was cooling down and while cooling it is contracting which distorted the surface in mountains. But Wegener reasoned that if this was the mechanism, the mountains should appear randomly, otherwise the big mountains were concentered in limited zones.

The first evidence for Wegener was the similarity of the physiography of the cost of Brazil and the western Africa; the British philosopher Francis Bacon noted this fact too in 1620.

In 1858 in Paris, Antonio Snider had written about the similarity of fossils found at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean suggesting that some time these shores were together. These facts were the basis of the theories of Wegener, theories the he presented in 1912 to Frankfurt Geological Association. Wegener had to stop his researches due to the World War I, but he was shot and discharged, and returned to his research during his long convalescence, but since and then no longer limited to his field, he used data from: meteorology, geology, oceanography, seismology, geomagnetism, paleontology and the theories of evolution.

In 1915 he published his book, the origin of the continents and oceans; in which he presented theory about the continental drift. Most of the scientifics took Wegener’s thesis with derision, because Wegener had presenter too few evidences to support his view, though later, his ideas would be accepted almost universally.

 Now there are too many evidences about the earth as a dynamic planet, for example the similarly of the fauna in Africa and Brazil, the alignment of the mountain ranges of America and Europe also suggests that once were a single, the Brazilian cost seems to fit perfectly with the western African coast; geographical coincidence between these coast is even greater if performed from the continental shelves