Download Uh... What did you say...? The continents MOVE?

Uh... What did you say...? The continents MOVE? - Alfred Wegener, fit of the continents, continental drift, pangea
Uh... What did you say...? The continents MOVE?
Alfred Wegener, fit of the continents, continental drift, pangea
Plate Tectonics Unit
That's right. That great big continent that's under your feet slides around the planet like a big graham
cracker. Look at a map in your classroom. The seven big blocks of land called continents are moving
through the sea a little bit every day. How does this happen? Who figured this out? If they're moving,
where did they start from? And where will they end up?
Can you feel the earth move under your feet? No, of course you can't. A man named Alfred Wegener
(1880-1930) also did not feel the earth move under his feet, which makes it even more impressive that he
figured out that the continents move! He began his career studying stars, then moved on to rocks, and
finally weather. He was interested in everything, which is never a bad thing. Reading in a library one day,
Alfred came across a list of the same animals that live on the shores of both America and Africa. How
could the same creatures live on lands separated by the ocean? At the time, people believed that there
had been bridges of land connecting these coasts and that these bridges had sunk beneath the waves.
Wegener kept searching for a better answer, though. Then he noticed something big. The coasts of the
two continents looked like they fit together like two puzzle pieces . . .
If you take a copy of a map and cut out the shapes of the continents, you will be able to fit them all
together. Of course, over hundreds of millions of years, the land has curved and lost little pieces of land
as islands, so it will not be a perfect fit. With a little bending, though, you can make it work. Others had
noticed that the coasts seemed to fit, but Wegener had a leg up on them. Thanks to his study of weather
and rocks, he was able to find evidence to support his ideas. He found that not only did the continents fit
but also saw that the same plants, broken mountains, and even the lines in the rocks matched up too.
This helped him come up with the fit of the continents, which is the idea that all the continents must have
all been touching at one point. Over time, the land must have separated and drifted apart, taking the living
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Uh... What did you say...? The continents MOVE? - Alfred Wegener, fit of the continents, continental drift, pangea
things on them along too.
What does this mean? It meant that all animals, plants, and everything we can see came from the same
big piece of land. It's only when that land broke up and floated apart that the animals started to change
and look a lot different. Pangea is the name Wegener gave to the great piece of land that held all of the
continents together as one. The name means "all the land." He came up with the idea that one hundred
and thirty million years ago, it broke apart like the graham cracker in milk. This idea was so big and so
different that no one believed him.
It was not until after Wegener died seventy years ago that people saw that he was right. When scientists
studied the earth's crust, they found it was made up of giant plates. The continents are all part of pieces of
earth, which are 80 to 400 miles thick. Wegener called his idea continental drift, which meant that our
land slowly drifts like pieces of wood across the ocean. He got this one wrong. The land is connected to
the ocean floor, which is also a part of the plates that are moving. Instead of water, these plates slide
around on top of the earth. It's a surface of cool rock that sits on rock that's so hot that it becomes slippery
like butter . . . or more like lava.
Some things in our world happen so slowly. It's hard to see that they are happening at all. Wegener used
his curiosity and his experience with rocks and weather to figure out that the continents had fit together at
one point but had been slowly drifting apart for millions of years. This gives us the answer to so many
questions. How can the same animals come to live on two different coasts that have a huge ocean
between them? Stay curious and keep your eyes open. Who knows what you may find?
References:
Enchanted Learning. "Continental Drift." Enchanted Learning, 1996.
<http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/glossary/Contdrift.shtml>
UCMP. "Alfred Wegener." UCMP, 2010. <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html>
How Stuff Works Videos. "100 Greatest Discoveries: Continental Drift." Discovery, 2011.
<http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/29267-100-greatest-discoveries-continental-drift-vid...
Scientus. "Wegener and Continental Drift Theory." Scientus, 2014.
<http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html>
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