Pangaea Scientific Theory

Millions of years ago Pangaea is what was believed to be, and now has evidence to support, the first continent on earth. It is referred to as the super continent as all existing continents were connected to it. In Greek, Pangaea is defined as “all the earth”; the man who came up with theory was Alfred Wegener. Wegener had a PhD in astronomy but always had an interest in geoscience. “Wegener was browsing in the university library when he came across a scientific paper that listed fossils of identical plants and animals found on opposite sides of the Atlantic” (UCMP, Alfred Wegener). This paper sparked quite an interest for Wegener, and he began to research this topic extensively. He knew to prove this “crazy” theory he would have
to be able to back it up with a lot of scientific evidence.
As he began to look at the borders of all the continents he noticed that the borders could almost fit together like puzzle pieces. Next, he found similar fossils in different continents. How could tropical fossils like ferns be found in the North Pole where there is no possible way a tropical plant could possibly grow in the cold climate of the arctic regions? It didn’t add up for Wegener, he then believed that the climate was much different when Pangaea was around two hundred million years because of the different places animals were able to live at the time, then millions found as fossils where it would have been impossible for them to grow and survive in that geographical place due to climate, and resources needed to survive. So he has this evidence that at some point all these continents were connected, but how did they split apart was the biggest question asked. He decided to publish a book that explained his thinking behind the theory of “continental drift”. Many didn’t buy a word of the theory “continental drift” that Wegener was trying to prove, the fact that he had no idea how the continents split, ripped, or in some fashion formed the present-day formation of what the earth is modeled like today was his most
significant problem. (geology.com) Wegener didn’t exactly know how the continents broke and drifted off to form what we visualize as earth today.
His main thought was that land was moving under the earth’s first layer of crust. The movement under the earth’s surface was like the movement of how icebergs interact with each other, constant tension and energy building up to the point of a break. Although this was a good hypothesis of how land moves, he had no scientific evidence that could back this up, which again caused people not to buy into his theory of continental drift. His research of earth’s surface being able to move through earth’s crust was shown to be impossible, there would be no way enough force could have built up for that to happen. If it were at all possible, the earth’s surface would not be able to uphold the force, causing it to fall apart into tiny pieces. According to scientists, the force would cause earth’s rotation to stop in less than a year. Wegener passed away in 1930, most of his research and work was not generally accepted by the science community, for the most part they stuck to their original thoughts that did not support Wegener’s theory of continental
drift. The finding of plate tectonics was what finally proved Wegener’s theory of continental drift to be true. Plate tectonics are “the branch of geology studying the folding and faulting of the earth 's crust” (George A. Miller, 1995). In 1929 scientist Arthur Holmes began to further look into Wegener’s mantel convection idea. The mantle is constantly heating, cooling, rising, and sinking which might cause the continents to move and break apart like Pangaea did. “Not until the 1960 's did Holmes ' idea receive any attention. Greater understanding of the ocean floor and the discoveries of features like mid-oceanic ridges, geomagnetic anomalies parallel to the mid-oceanic ridges, and the association of island arcs and oceanic trenches occurring together and near the continental margins, suggested convection might indeed be at work. “(Christiane Fellbaum,1998, ed.). The five major sea floor features are ocean trenches, deep-sea trenches, island arcs, geomagnetic patterns, and fault patterns.
Mid oceanic ridges are very large and take up a large part of the ocean floor. There are a lot of mountain ranges that grow on the sea floor of the ocean; all of these trenches and mountains cause different levels of heat across the sea floor coming from the mantle. The hottest part of the ocean floor is at the center of the crests in the mid-ocean ridges. 35,00 feet below sea level is where the deepest ocean trenches are located. The deep trenches are narrow and very long. They have a very low level of heat in the deep trench. The oldest rocks can normally be found in the deep ocean trenches.
Geomagnetic Anomalies are shown through stripes on the ocean floor. The stripes are formed across the ocean floor and can be recognized by age. New rocks are located closest to the mid ocean ridge. As the stripes get further away from the ocean ridge the age gets older and older. It occurs on both sides of the ridge, the patterns on each side of the ridge mirror each other. Rocks that are similar in age tend to have the same Magnetic characteristics. Island arcs are groups of islands located on the deep-sea trenches on the sea floor. All of these landforms on the sea floor show that there is movement of lithospheric slabs under the mantle.

(Plate Tectonics: The Mechanism, UCMP Berkeley)

Wegener’s theory of continental drift and the super continent Pangaea has now been proved with scientific evidence to be complete true. Millions of years ago there was a super continent called Pangaea that broke apart due to continental drift. Fossils and bridges have show evidence that animals were able to live in climate zones that would now a day is impossible for the species to survive in. Scientist have also found out due to sea floor mapping that movement is occurring constantly under the mantle of earths crust and one day part of continents will eventually break off again. After Wegener’s death his ideas were forgotten until later on when the science community discovered continental drift. His theories are now totally present in scientist and looked upon on as a huge scientific discovery. Now that we know continental drift is true and that Pangaea was once a super continent and broke apart we know it can happen again. The question isn’t will it happen again, the question is when will it happen again?

Bibliography

"Plate Tectonics." World of Earth Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Science In Context. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

AILSA ALLABY and MICHAEL ALLABY. "mantle convection." A Dictionary of Earth Sciences. 1999. Encyclopedia.com. 30 Apr. 2013.

George A. Miller (1995). WordNet: A Lexical Database for English.
Communications of the ACM Vol. 38, No. 11: 39-41.

Christiane Fellbaum (1998, ed.) WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

"Plate Tectonics - Pangaea Continent Maps." Pangea Continent Map. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.