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Arthur Holmes proposed the more plausible mechanism of mantle convection, [16] which, together with evidence provided by the mapping of the ocean floor following the Second World War, led to the development and acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics. This theory provides the widely-accepted explanation for the existence and breakup of Pangaea.
The theory of continental drift has since been validated and incorporated into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere. [2] The speculation that continents might have "drifted" was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596.
In 1915, in the first edition of his book, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, written in German, [22] Wegener drew together evidence from various fields to advance the theory that there had once been a giant continent, which he named "Urkontinent " [23] (German for "primal continent", analogous to the Greek "Pangaea", [24] meaning "All ...
The development of the theory of plate tectonics was the scientific and cultural change which occurred during a period of 50 years of scientific debate. The event of the acceptance itself was a paradigm shift and can therefore be classified as a scientific revolution, [47] now described as the Plate Tectonics Revolution.
Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802–1885) was a French geographer and geologist who theorized about the possibility of continental drift, anticipating Wegener's theories concerning Pangaea by several decades. In 1858, Snider-Pellegrini published his book, La Création et ses mystères dévoilés ("The Creation and its Mysteries Unveiled").
Harry Hammond Hess (May 24, 1906 – August 25, 1969) was an American geologist and a United States Navy officer in World War II who is considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics.
He terms the resulting changes in the course of Earth's history by the name of his theory Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics. He considered seafloor spreading at divergent plate boundaries as an effect of it. [27] In his opinion mantle convection as used as a concept in the theory of plate tectonics is physically impossible.
In 1915, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the existence of a supercontinent that he called Pangaea. In 1937, South African geologist Alexander du Toit proposed that Pangaea was divided into two larger landmasses, Laurasia in the Northern Hemisphere and Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere, separated by the Tethys Ocean.