 At one point in history all continents were combined in one big supercontinent  For some reason the continent split apart and the smaller land masses slowly drifted to there current positions

 Proposed that all landmasses were originally united into a supercontinent  He named the continent Pangaea from the Greek meaning “all land”  He presented a series of maps  showing the breakup of Pangaea  He amassed a tremendous amount of geologic evidence.

 Shorelines of continents fit together  matching marine, nonmarine and glacial rock sequences of Pennsylvanian to Jurassic age for all five Gondwana continents including Antarctica  Mountain ranges and glacial deposits  match up when continents are united into a single landmass

 Fossil Evidence

 Plant seeds from Glossopteris could not have been blown all over the world  The distances were too great

 Geologic Evidence 1. Mountain chains in South America and Africa 2. Continents looked like matching puzzle pieces (South America and Africa)

 Evidence from Rocks  Glacial deposits that were the same  They had to be near the south pole at one time

 Most geologists did not accept the idea of moving continents  No one could provide a suitable mechanism to explain how continents could move over Earth’s surface