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“It is only by combining the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine “truth” here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability.” The man who said this quote was Alfred Wegener, the scientist who proposed the theory of plate tectonics. Even though he received a Ph. D in astronomy, I would not just call him an astronomer. Wegener was much more than that, he was a geophysicist, a meteorologist, and a climatologist. He used all of these specialties together to study and develop his theory.

Over the course of his studies, he came across a paper that studied fossils and how there have been similar fossils of plants and animals found on opposite sides of oceans. Previous explanations for this occurrence were that there were land bridges joining continents together, but they have since collapsed and fallen to the bottom of the ocean. Even though this would explain why the fossils ended up on different continents, Wegener noticed a similarity in land structures that would explain the fossil locations with a greater certainty. He visualized how the coastlines of Africa and South America fit together like a puzzle. While referring back to the point he determined this, he said “A conviction of the fundamental soundness of the idea took the root of my mind.” There are other geographical formations that he realized fit together also, such as the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands.

With all of this new evidence in mind, Wegener published his theory of “continental drift”, which explained how all of the continents started out as one large land mass, Pangaea. His theory received much criticism because he did not correctly explain how the continents shifted. The mainframe of his theory, Pangaea, is taught to elementary school students in their geography classes. It is also taught in more detail later on in formal education. However, there are no discrepancies with teaching this theory like there were with Darwin’s theory of evolution.