Geocentric Science

In the early 1900s, Alfred Wegner introduced the idea of continental drift. This theory had four main components.

1. The continents look like they fit together like a puzzle and then drifted apart. When all of the continents fit together, they formed one original landmass (or a super continent) known as Pangaea.

2. There are similar rock types, fossils, plants, and glacial remnants on the matching shorelines of the continents.

3. There are fossils of tropical plants and animals in polar regions. There are also fossils of polar plants and animals in tropical regions. This indicates that the continents must have moved or shifted position since those plants and animals lived.

4. The continental crust and oceanic crust differ in depth. The continental crust is thick and consists of granite (low density igneous rock). The oceanic crust is thin and consists of basalt (high density igneous rock). Wegner purposed that there are two levels of crust because:

   • The crust floats on top of the hot mantle
   • The continents are higher because the less dense continental crust sits and floats on top of the more dense material.

   The drifting was the result of the blocks of crust simply moving away from one another.