1. Continental Drift

3. Observation
Have you ever noticed how South America and Africa seem to fit together? If you have, you aren't alone.
Write about what you noticed

4. What is Continental Drift
The breaking up and moving apart of the rock plates that the continents sit on.

5. Sir Francis Bacon
The first person to notice “continental drift” in the 17th century.
Pangaea: the name of this “supercontinent”
200 million years ago the Earth's continents were joined together to form one gigantic land mass

6. The Super Continent “Pangaea”
Millions of years ago began to move apart
Continents are still drifting!!!
The Earth's surface is constantly moving and reforming, but so slowly that you or I can't observe it ourselves.

7. Continental Drift 170,000,000 years ago

8. Continental Drift 100,000,000 years ago

9. Continental Drift 50,000,000 years ago

10. Continental Drift Today

11. Evidence Supporting Continental Drift
Alfred Wegener found evidence
Shapes match
Species match
Rocks match
Ice match

12. The Shapes Match
The continents look as if they were pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle that could fit together to make one giant super-continent.
The bulge of Africa fits the shape of the coast of North America
Brazil fits along the coast of Africa beneath the bulge.

13. The Plants and Animals Match
Wegener noted that plant fossils of late Paleozoic age found on several different continents were quite similar.
This suggests that they evolved together on a single large land mass.
Fossils have been found on the matching coastlines of South America and Africa, which are now widely separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

14. The Rocks Match
Broad belts of rocks in Africa and South America are the same type. These broad belts then match when the end of the continents are joined

15. The Ice Matches
Glacial striations on rocks show that glaciers moved from Africa toward the Atlantic Ocean and from the Atlantic Ocean onto South America.
Such glaciations are most likely if the Atlantic Ocean were missing and the continents joined.

16. Why Few People Believed
Wegener's Continental Drift theory was not readily accepted by the science community of his day.
It was difficult to conceive of large continents plowing through the sea floor to move to new locations.
What kind of forces could be strong enough to move such large masses of solid rock over such great distances?

17. Wegner Makes a Comeback
Recent evidence from ocean floor exploration and other studies has rekindled interest in Wegener's theory, and lead to the development of the theory of plate tectonics.

18. Continental Drift Cartoons