However, at that time, many scientists that had observed similarities in fossils in places like South America and Africa believed there were similar fossils in different continents because of a land bridge that were formed by two continents. Many science communities believe that land bridges allowed migration of many different species and even people to one place to another by large bodies of water frozen by low temperature known as ice age.
This is because throughout many years, new information was found. For instance, in the , evidence for sea floor spreading was discovered by the US Navy scientists.
Why didn't most geologists believe Alfred Wegener's theory? Answer 1: This is a great question. Click to see full answer. In this way, what was lacking from Wegener's hypothesis? He believed that Pangaea was intact until the late Carboniferous period, about million years ago, when it began to break up and drift apart. However, Wegener's hypothesis lacked a geological mechanism to explain how the continents could drift across the earths surface as he proposed.
Likewise, why was Pangaea not accepted? Despite having this geological and paleontological evidence, Wegener's theory of continental drift was not accepted by the scientific community, because his explanation of the driving forces behind continental movement which he said stemmed from the pulling force that created Earth's equatorial bulge or the.
The greatest problem facing Wegener was the lack of direct evidence for the movements of continents no GPS at the time! The main reason that Wegener's hypothesis was not accepted was because he suggested no mechanism for moving the continents. He thought the force of Earth's spin was sufficient to cause continents to move, but geologists knew that rocks are too strong for this to be true.
What evidence proves continental drift? Evidence for continental drift Wegener knew that fossil plants and animals such as mesosaurs, a freshwater reptile found only South America and Africa during the Permian period, could be found on many continents.
He also matched up rocks on either side of the Atlantic Ocean like puzzle pieces. How does glacial evidence support the theory of continental drift? There is also much climate evidence supporting continental drift, most notable of which is glacial activity. Alfred Wegener investigated this field and found an anomaly in the Permo-Carboniferous ice sheet that was found through glacial till deposits to have once covered all the southern major plates.
Who discovered plate tectonics? The present is the key to the past is the foundational statement of uniform process. Continental Drift challenged the idea that the continents were much the same today as in the past. These ideas were heresy to the community of Geological scientists had to be rejected. The timeline of evolutionary history as first outlined in was not compatible with the movements of the continents proposed by Continental Drift. The Geosyncline theory provided a means of explaining how the deep ocean fossils came to found in neat horizontal layers on the continents.
Gaylord Simpson a prominent evolutionary scientists opposed plate tectonics the modern form of Continental Drift up through the 's despite the strong evidence for the theory because of the difficulties in the evolutionary timeline. This was after a mechanism for the movement of the continents was found in seafloor spreading and convection currents.
The lack of a mechanism for Continental Drift was the excuse for the scientific community to reject the theory of Continental Drift. There was sufficient evidence at the time for the theory to be accepted. The contradictions to accepted theories was perhaps the main reason Continental Drift was rejected.
Why did most scientists reject Wegener's idea of continental drift?
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