Tag Archives: Continental Drift

World maps depicting the ages of seafloor crust. Red indicates the youngest regions, including the currently forming crust, while blue represents the oldest oceanic crust still in existence, formed approximately 150 to 180 million years ago.
1973: Seafloor Spreading – Tanya Atwater’s Contributions to Plate Tectonics

Tanya Atwater’s groundbreaking research in the 1970s provided key insights into seafloor spreading, contributing significantly to the understanding of plate tectonics and the geological history of Earth

Top: Marie Tharp in 2001. Bottom: Section of a contemporary map illustrating the topography of the seafloor in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
1957: Marie Tharp’s Legacy – Unveiling the Mysteries of the Seafloor

Marie Tharp's pioneering work in seafloor mapping provided critical insights into ocean topography and played a crucial role in developing plate tectonics theory

Main image: A 1930 photograph of German meteorologist and geologist Alfred Wegener. Inset: An early computer-assisted reconstruction of Pangea, fitting many of the current continents together.
1912: Alfred Wegener and the Theory of Continental Drift

Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, initially met with skepticism, fundamentally changed geology with the later discovery of tectonic plates

A NASA satellite composite image showing Antarctica centered on the South Pole, with the continent covered in ice, snow, and glaciers, and sea ice encompassing major bays and inlets
c. 35 Million BCE: Antarctica’s Dynamic Geological History

Antarctica, often perceived as a remote icy land, has undergone significant changes over time. Originally part of Gondwana and later Pangea, it separated from Australia around 35 million years ago, leading to the formation of [...]

An artistic global map depicting the supercontinent Pangea around 250 to 300 million years ago, showing the initial separation of what would become North America from the northern edge of future Africa.
c. 300 Million BCE: Pangea – The Ancient Supercontinent

Delves into the formation of Pangea, the ancient supercontinent, over 300 million years ago, through a series of continent-continent collisions, highlighting the concept of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener and supporting evidence from fossils [...]