Alfred Wegener InvestigatesContinental

Drift

Alfred Wegener Observed

• He observed that South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces.

Alfred Wegener Researched

• As he began to conduct research he found that Brazil and Africa had fossils of extinct animals that were the same!

Plant Fossils, too

• He found extinct plants had left their fossils in both Africa and Brazil.

Tropical Plants in the Arctic

• Wegener found that tropical plants such a ferns that growing in areas around the equator had left fossils on an island in the arctic which is near the North Pole.

Wegener Posed Questions

• How could rocks be exactly the same in Brazil and Africa?

• How could fossils the exactly the same in Brazil and Africa?

• How could tropical fossils be found at the North Pole?

Wegener Inferred

• Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents must move.

• He thought that at one time the continents must have all been connected in one big super continent.

• He called that super continent Pangaea