World 1 · Earth's Structure · 7 minWegener's puzzle
The continental drift idea
Teaching this? Open projector mode
In 1912 Alfred Wegener noticed that the coastlines of South America and Africa fit together like jigsaw pieces. He proposed a radical idea: the continents had once been joined and had drifted apart.
His evidence was strong: matching rock formations and mountain belts across oceans, identical fossils of land animals on continents now separated by seas, and glacial scratches showing ice once covered land that is tropical today.
Check yourself
Which was NOT part of Wegener’s evidence?
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