Plate tectonics was only discovered relatively recently. Though German meteorologist Alfred Wegner first proposed continental drift in 1912 – and hypothesized that the continents were once ...

If this was the case, then mountains would be spread evenly over the Earth’s surface. We know that this is not the case. Wegener suggested that mountains formed when the edge of a drifting ...

In 1912 he proposed that the continents we know today were once all attached in a single landmass he called Pangaea (Greek for "all earth"). They were surrounded by one global ocean, but then ...

It also explained why continents drift over the ... where plates abut. Plate tectonics is not as good at explaining events and features elsewhere, particularly in continental interiors.

With the discovery of plate tectonics and the mapping of the ... Alfred Wegener's idea of "continental drift" looked less ludicrous than his contemporaries had thought. There still seemed to ...