![]() ![]() Wegener thought that the glaciers were centered over the southern land mass close to the South Pole and the continents moved to their present positions later on. Today glaciers only form on land and nearer the poles. This would indicate that the glaciers either formed in the middle of the ocean and/or covered most of the Earth. Grooves and rock deposits left by ancient glaciers are found today on different continents very close to the equator.The fossils of these organisms are found on lands that are now far apart. Wegener used fossil evidence to support his continental drift hypothesis. Cynognathus and Lystrosaurus were land reptiles and were unable to swimįigure 3.Mesosaurus was a swimming reptile but could only swim in fresh water.Fossils of the seed fern Glossopteris were too heavy to be carried so far by wind.He suggested that the organisms would not have been able to travel across the oceans. Wegener proposed that the organisms had lived side by side, but that the lands had moved apart after they were dead and fossilized. Ancient fossils of the same species of extinct plants and animals are found in rocks of the same age but are on continents that are now widely separated (figure 3).The similarities between the Appalachian and the eastern Greenland mountain ranges are evidences for the continental drift hypothesis. Wegener concluded that they formed as a single mountain range that was separated as the continents drifted.įigure 2. The Appalachians of the eastern United States and Canada, for example, are just like mountain ranges in eastern Greenland, Ireland, Great Britain, and Norway (figure 2). Mountain ranges with the same rock types, structures, and ages are now on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.Wegener said the rocks had formed side-by-side and that the land had since moved apart. ![]() Identical rocks, of the same type and age, are found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.\)īesides the way the continents fit together, Wegener and his supporters collected a great deal of evidence for the continental drift hypothesis.
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