Movement of the continents

Although the perception we have of the continents is that of large land masses that remain immobile, the reality is that these land masses they are in constant motion and its displacement over centuries is what has ended up forming the continents that we know today. To talk about this very interesting process in this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to talk about the movement of the continents.

When talking about the movement of the continents or Continental drift, we must understand that there are numerous theories about how this happens, but the main one and the one that has the most followers is the theory of Alfred Wegener. This theory is not too old and is that most thoughts on the continental movement are very recent.

Wegener was a meteorologist and geologist of German origin that when realizing that the continents could fit together, even having a great distance divided by the Atlantic; he thought that the continents had not always been in that position. This joined the ideas of other thinkers who saw how Africa and South America could also fit together and, therefore, Wegener

in 1912 he created his own theory.

Another data from Wegener's study was the animals and vegetation, since seeing fossil remains of separate continents he realized that both areas had been inhabited by very similar species; therefore, it was evident that living things from both areas had existed in the same habitat for a time. To this they were united that the fossil remains seemed to have suffered climates that were impossible in the areas they inhabit today.

This theory spoke that, in the past, the current continents had been united, forming a kind of supercontinent, being Pangeathe name he was given. Wegener's theory was denied by the vast majority of his contemporaries, since his theories on continental drift were not entirely clear. Wegener thought that the movement of the continents moved on a dense ocean floor, but according to his logic this continental movement was too fast compared to the real data.

Wegener's theory was not accepted because there were too many data that rejected it, but there were many scholars who kept studying this effect trying to improve Wegener's theory.

Wegener's theory of continental drift joined the later theory of the expansion of the ocean floor, and both were part of the call Plate tectonic theory.

This 1960 theory is based on the movement of the so-called tectonic plates (some plates that form the earth's surface and that are sliding) and it is this movement that, little by little, has been moving the continents, being the cause that supercontinents have become continents over time.

Although the current theories about the movement of the continents are very different from those proposed by Wegener, we must bear in mind that There is great respect for his person, being very important that he was the forerunner of theories and, therefore, in him the thought of the supercontinents and its movement. This is the case of many more thinkers, geniuses who lived in a time when, due to lack of means, it was impossible to achieve feats that years later became simpler.

Therefore, the current theory about the movement of the continents is that of the tectonic plates, being a modern mixture of continental drift and the expansion of the ocean floor. According to this theory the continents are always and have been in motion, so that in millions of years its position will be totally different from the current one.

These theories help to see a world map of millions of years ago in which a series of supercontinents existed, such as the one named Pangea, which were formed by part of other present-day continents and which made up most of the land surface of the epoch. The continental movement broke these supercontinents and their evolution over millions of years placed the continents in the current position.

To conclude this lesson on the movement of the continents we must talk about the different evidence provided by Wegener to defend his position on continental drift. Many of them are not correct, however, they served as the basis for later theories much more correct. The evidence given by Wegener is as follows:

• Wegener realized that the coasts of the continents agreed each other, so they must have been united at some point.
• Wegener realized that there were mountain systems with the same type of rock and just as old on both continents, so the mountains of separate continents must have been together at some point.
• He considered that climates that the rocks had suffered were impossible due to its current location, so they must have been in other areas centuries ago.
• Wegener found on different continents a series of very similar fossils, so at some point they must have lived together.