Meteorologist Turned Geologist?

Have you ever had an idea that wasn’t believed simply because of your occupation? An idea strongly supported by evidence? German meteorologist Alfred Wegener has.

Who Was Alfred Wegener?

Alfred Wegener was born in November of 1880 in Germany. He attended a school in Berlin and studied

 meteorology. Wegener then worked as a well-known meteorologist in Germany. That is, until 1908 when an amateur American geologist named Frank Bursley had a theory. His theory was that the continents once slid around. Bursley’s theory had no hard evidence to back it up besides the observation that the coastlines of different land masses looked like they would fit together like a puzzle. AT the time Wegener was studying the irregularities of fossils. This theory caught the attention of Wegener while he was working as a meteorologist at the University of Marburg. Curiosity consumed Alfred and he started his journey to find an explanation for Bursley’s theory. Alfred was fueled purely by curiosity at first, and then he was set on making people believe him. 

You’re Just a Meteorologist

Obviously, Alfred Wegener had little to no credentials in the geological field since he was a meteorologist. If you didn’t know, a meteorologist is simply a fancy word for a weather forecaster. With that being said, this was also the time of WW1, so his findings and ideas went unnoticed due to nobody caring about the continents maybe moving when everyone is at war. I believe that since he was German, and Germans were the main antagonist in the war this hindered people from believing his discovery. Wegner had investigated plant and fossil irregularities on different continents that didn’t make any sense. During his research he realized that the irregularities of plants and fossils didn’t match the history of Earth that he and everyone else thought was fact. Wegener realized that there were matching plants and fossils were on different continents separated by an entire body of water. He was stumped, “How, he wondered, did marsupials travel from South America to Australia? How did identical snails turn up in Scandinavia and New England? And how, come to that, did one account for coal seams and other semi-tropical remnants in frigid spots like Spitsbergen, four hundred miles north of Norway, if they had not somehow migrated there from warmer climates?” (Bryson, 2003). This evidence is what Wegner used to form his theory of Pangea. Alfred Wegener concluded that all the continents used to be one giant land mass, called Pangea, and over time the continents had drifted apart separating the animals and plants that he used during research. This was Wegener’s theory of continental drift; the continents were one giant landmass and over time drifted apart and somehow ended up in their current positions. Alfred put all of his work and discoveries into a book titled: Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, or The Origin of Continents and Oceans. The book was published in 1912 in German and even with the first world war occupying most people’s minds it was published in English 3 years later. Due to the war the book didn’t get the deserved attention until Wegener spruced up The Origin of Continents and Oceans and then in 1920, it was the topic between most geologists. They agreed that yes, the continents do in fact move but only up and down, it was silly to believe that the continents were also capable of moving side to side. The geologists believing that the continents only moving in a vertical pattern was referred to as isostasy, and although there was no evidence to back up this way of thinking this is all the geologist of the time knew and therefore anyone who thought otherwise was not to be trusted. Little did geologist of the time know, Wegener was correct and started the discovery of continental drift, which he didn’t live long enough to get credit, but he is now recognized as the man who discovered continental drift and Pangea.

What We Now Know

Because of these geologists and their discoveries, we know specifically, how continental drift caused Pangea to break into different land masses around 200 million years ago. Today we know that the continents are on huge rock slabs that are called tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are constantly moving and therefore, the continents are constantly getting further away from each other. Sea floor spreading is the most common effects of tectonic plates moving away from each other. This consists of molten rock flowing through the open space from the tectonic plates drifting apart and creating a new seafloor, this typically occurs near mid-ocean ridges. Science has developed to the point where we can even tell that the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates grow 1 inch further from each other every year!

Has there ever been a time when you turned out to be right when nobody was believing you? What was it, how did it make you feel, and how did you handle the situation?  

 

References

National Geographic Society. “Continental Drift.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012,

www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/continental-drift/#:~:text=Pangaea,describe%20Pangaea%20and%20continental%20drift.

The Earth Moves” A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books,

2003, pp. 173–177.

National Geographic Society. “Continental Drift.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/continental-drift/#:~:text=Pangaea,describe%20Pangaea%20and%20continental%20drift.