The Way Continental Drift Theory Was Replaced
From the short amount of time humans have been on this earth we have learned and discovered quite a lot. History has shown us that these discoveries have not always been entirely correct. With time and advancements in technology and knowledge we have come to find more scientifically accredited and factual discoveries. The following paragraph will explain how it took 55 years for the theory of continental drift to be “fleshed out” by the new theory of plate tectonics.
It was proposed the continents used to fit together like a map and have since spread to their current geological location. Paleontologists have found fossils of similar species plant and animal based on continents that are now seperated massively over great geographic distance which supports this theory. The new theory of plate tectonic began in 1915, “but the arguments for continental motions did not gel until the 1960s, when a drastic expansion of geophysical research, driven by the cold war, produced evidence that reopened and eventually settled the debate”.
British geologists Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews, key players in this new theory, discovered ocean bedrock with magnetic field polarity, a key observation as evidence that the seafloor was spreading at a slow rate resulting in continents being pushed apart. Studies showed that the magnetic north pole seemed to move over the globe over the centuries. This could only mean a couple of different things. Either the tectonic plates were moving, or the magnetic north pole was. “The magnetic north pole is however, a fixed location, except during periods of magnetic reversals, this piece of evidence strongly supports the idea of plate tectonics”.
United States geologists Harry Hess “suggested that rising mantle-convection cells would drive apart the ocean floor above them, increasing the separation of continents to either side. The idea, which his colleague scientist Robert Dietz gave to 'sea-floor spreading, explained the old geological observations and the new geophysical ones, but it did not gain immediate traction”. A prime example of these “divergent boundaries” where these observations can be made is the East Africa Rift Valley on the east coast of Africa near the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. After World War 2 more evidence was uncovered that supports the theory of plate tectonics. To monitor and explore nuclear testing, seismometers were installed all over the world in 1960. This unveiled at the time an unbelievable geological discovery. “It showed that earthquakes, volcanoes, and other active geologic features for the most part aligned along distinct belts around the world, and those belts defined the edges of tectonic plates'.
To summarize, it took more than 20 scientists, including scientist Tanya Atwater and scientist Marie Tharp, these scientists did key work explaining volcanism, continental drift, heat flow and seismicity around the globe that created the theory of plate tectonics as we know it today. All of this evidence from scientific studies and new technology took 55 years to be accepted in 1970 as the model of Earth processes.
