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Concept

Continental Drift

Also Known As Taylor-Wegener Hypothesis
Geology

Alfred Wegener's 1912 proposal that today's continents were once joined in a single landmass and have since drifted apart. It has subsequently been extensively validated and incorporated into plate tectonics, which studies the continents as they ride on plates of the lithosphere; Wegener's idea supplied the observation, and seafloor spreading later supplied the mechanism it had lacked. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Origin Year
1912 1
Connections

Associated With

Paleomagnetism, Disciplines

Evidence from paleomagnetism led to the revival of the continental drift hypothesis.

Source Paleomagnetism (Wikipedia)
Pangaea, Concepts

Pangaea is the reconstruction at the heart of Wegener's continental drift argument.

Source Pangaea (Wikipedia)

In Discipline

Geology, Disciplines
Source Continental Drift (Wikipedia)

Held Differently

Plate Tectonics, Processes

Not rejected: continental drift's core observation was validated and absorbed whole into plate tectonics once seafloor spreading supplied the missing mechanism. Variant, a different and superseded account of the same underlying reality, not a debunked claim.

Source Continental Drift (Wikipedia)

Proposed By

Alfred Wegener, Scientists

Why this is disputed. Wegener is credited with developing continental drift into a comprehensive, evidence-based theory published in 1912, but the core idea that continents had once fit together or moved was proposed by others earlier, including Antonio Snider-Pellegrini in 1858 and Frank Bursley Taylor, whose continental-creep model was presented in 1908 and published in 1910.

Source Continental Drift (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Continental Drift (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Article text
    For a time in the mid-20th century, the theory of continental drift was referred to as the "Taylor-Wegener hypothesis".
  • History, Early history section, paragraph on Wegener's 1912 and 1915 work
    The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, and expanded into book form with his 1915 publication, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans).
  • In Discipline: Geology
View the Source
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Proposed By: Alfred Wegener

Antonio Snider-Pellegrini illustrated in 1858 how the Atlantic coastlines could be closed together into a single landmass, and Frank Bursley Taylor proposed a mechanism of continental creep in 1908 (published 1910), the first to link continental motion to mountain building, attributing the Himalaya to the Indian subcontinent's collision with Asia. Wegener's distinct and larger contribution, the reason the theory carries his name, was assembling geological, paleontological and paleoclimatic evidence into a single systematic, testable case in 1912.

A dissenting reading, from Antonio Snider-Pellegrini and Frank Bursley TaylorContinental Drift (Wikipedia), Wikimedia Foundation
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