How the contours of the earth's land and sea are formed have been different. The "continental drift theory" boldly proposed by the German scholar Wegener at the beginning of this century caused a sensation in the academic community at that time.
Wigner
Wigener had a keen interest in nature. When he was a student, he was inspired by the similar contours and bumps on both sides of the Atlantic, and he believed that there must be a reason for this anastomosis, and he proposed this idea among his classmates. In order to argue that the two sides of the Atlantic can be put together, he collected a lot of geodetic, geological, paleontological, paleoclimate and other data, and at the age of 32, published the "Continental Drift Theory". Due to the limitations of science and technology at that time, he was unable to produce extremely sufficient and powerful evidence, and soon it was discarded as a bizarre hypothesis of "fanaticism".
With the development of science and technology, since the 1950s, a large number of new geological data have provided more and more evidence for the "continental drift theory" and made it a fact. The strongest evidence is:
(1) According to the survey, the paleomagnetic poles of Europe and North America in the same geological period are not in the same position, and the curves of their rotation are different from each other. Therefore, if North America is turned 30° eastward, the two polar shift curves will completely coincide. Since there is only one North Pole on Earth at the same time, this only indicates that North America has drifted westward. Similar phenomena exist in South America and Africa.
(2) Radioisotope content determination of rocks in South America and Africa found that if South America and Africa were stitched together, there were two groups of rocks of different ages and the boundaries between them were exactly connected, and the direction of geological formations was also extended from one continent to another.
(3) The distribution of tin ore belts, ancient strata and the consistency of paleontological fossils on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean also provide evidence for the consolidation of continents on both sides of the strait.
