Continental drift

The hypothesis that continents move horizontally across Earth's surface, proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 and rejected until the 1960s.

Alfred Wegener: German meteorologist who compiled the evidence for continental drift and published the theory in 1912. The lone author of the theory, whose career outside geology shaped its reception.
Polflucht: Wegener's proposed force driving continents toward the equator, arising from Earth's rotation. The flight-the-poles force Wegener himself proposed, later shown far too weak.
Plate tectonics: The 1960s theory of moving lithospheric plates that subsumed continental drift. The successor that kept drift's continental motion but replaced its picture of plates versus ocean floors.
Glossopteris: A seed fern whose fossils appear across all southern continents and India. Its distribution across oceans was inexplicable without drift or land bridges.
Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis: The 1963 explanation of magnetic stripes on the seafloor as a record of spreading and reversals. The decisive confirmation that turned drift from heresy into consensus.
The Origin of Continents and Oceans: Wegener's 1915 book laying out the drift hypothesis, revised through four editions by 1929. The full statement of the theory, including his maps of Pangaea through time.
Tidal forces: Stresses from lunar and solar gravity on Earth's body, proposed by others as a drift engine. Harold Jeffreys showed these forces could not move continents against rock strength.
Land bridges: Hypothesized sunken continent connections explaining matching fossils without horizontal motion. The mainstream alternative to drift for explaining identical fossils on separated continents.
Mesosaurus: A small freshwater reptile fossil found only in South America and western Africa. A freshwater animal could not cross an ocean, so its split range implied a once-joined coast.
Deep Sea Drilling Project: The 1968 ocean drilling program whose sediment ages proved young oceans and spreading floors. Direct drilling tests that verified predictions drift's success depended on.

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