Pangaea

Pangaea Many people believe that Alfred Wegener invented the theory of continental drift, but he didn’t. He just played a major role in proving it. As early as 1620, people like Francis Bacon were noticing how similar the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America was, and how they appeared to fit together perfectly. In 1800, a German botanist, Alexander Von Humbolt, came up with the theory of continental drift. He also noticed how Africa and South America seemed to fit together, and wondered is they were once connected. Later in 1858, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini showed how Africa and South America might have been one landform once, but later separated using maps. He also noticed how similar fossils were in Europe and suspected there too were once connected. In the early 1900s, Wegener also suggested that all of the continents could have once been a single continent. Alfred Wegener was a lecturer in astronomy and meteorology. In the fall of 1911, when he was 31 years old, he was at the University of Marbug’s Library, in Germany, when he happened to pick up a scientific paper. This paper supported the idea that there was a land bridge between Africa and Brazil. Before this, Wegener had been familiar with the idea that the continents move, but it was not until he found this article that he was amazed. The evidence shown in the paper included descriptions of the same fossils of animals and plants that could not have survived the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean, which means that they couldn’t cross over to different continents. Laurasia was the name given to the northern part of Pangaea, and Gondwanaland was the southern part. Pangaea, it is said, covered half of the Earth’s surface, and was surrounded by an ocean called Panthlassa, which means “universal sea.” There are many pieces of evidence that Pangaea really exsisted. First of all, the puzzle-like fit of South America and Africa. Secondly, same plant and animal