Heather DeLancett Geology 111L -002 Spring 2011

The Origins of the Theory of Plate Tectonics

About ten years ago, I found a copy of Continents Adrift: Readings from Scientific American in a used bookstore. The book waited untouched on my bookshelf for years before I gave it a good perusal. Already familiar with the theory of plate tectonics that Id learned in grade school, my interest was motivated towards gaining understanding about how the scientific community, and then the general public, comes to adopt new theories, especially theories that shift worldview paradigms. Nothing in the book surprised me; except for the dates! Was it possible that my entire conception of how the earth works was really such a new concept? This paper resumes my initial curiosity with that question. After adequate maps of the New World had been drafted, Francis Bacon is the first writer to whom the germ of the idea has been attributed. (Hallam, 1973, p. 1). In his Novum Organum of 1620, Bacon suggests the general conformity of the outline of South America and Africa, a clue that would continue to inspire others to look for evidence of how they may have been joined in the past. In 1830, Charles Lyell published Principles of Geology based on observations from a growing fossil record and controlled experiments with crystals and rocks. Trying to answer the question of how old the Earth was, Lyell suggested a theory of Uniformitarianism as opposed to the competing theories of Neptunism (the earth had been completely covered in water and land was shaped by receding waters) and Plutonism (land was shaped by cataclysmic event of intense heat). Lyell proposed that the key to the Earths past was to be found in observing the forces continuing to happen today and that the Earth was

very old (Turning Points in the Physical Sciences - Program One 130 - 1819, 2005). Though Lyell held a correct belief, it was the spread of this Uniformitarianism doctrine which caused the first proposals of continental drifting to go largely unnoticed, especially in the Anglo-American solid Earth emphasizing geophysical tradition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Hallam, 1973, p. 3). Geological speculation was primarily occupied by theories of a former landmass (Atlantis) sinking into the Atlantic Ocean basin in 1858 when Antonio Snider-Pellegrini published Le Cration et ses mystres dvoils (Hallam, 1973, pp. 1-2). Snider-Pellegrini proposed the catastrophic fracturing and drifting apart of the Atlantic continents during the Noachian flood, calling the Western Hemisphere Atlantis. In 1881, Osmond Fisher published Physics of the Earths Crust postulating that the Earth had a relatively fluid interior subject to convection currents rising beneath oceans and falling beneath continents (Hallam, 1973, p. 3). In 1910, the American F.B. Taylor was the first to present a coherent hypothesis of continental drift, which he called a mighty creeping movement of the Earths crust due to his observation of Eduard Suesss work on the Tertiary mountain belts of Eurasia (Hallam, 1973, pp. 35). Taylor proposed that tidal forces began acting on the crust when the moon was captured (opposing Darwins idea that the moon was lost out of the Pacific Ocean basin) by the Earths gravitational field. However, Taylor could not offer much independent evidence and his ideas had far less impact than those of Eduard Suess. Suesss hypothesis of the features of the crust being caused by the ongoing cooling and contracting of the planet was widely accepted. Alfred Wegener was a German meteorologist who published Die Vershiebung der Kontinente in 1912, which was enlarged to include oceans and translated into French, English, Spanish and Russian by 1924. His hypothesis of Continental Displacement (popularly referred to as continental drift in the English speaking populations) began by examining the inadequacies and contradictions in the orthodox theory and then citing geological evidence to support the idea that Pangaea a huge

supercontinent had rifted and moved apart in fragmented components since the Mesozoic era. Wegener placed faith in geodetic observations to confirm this movement and used evidence of the shifting of ancient climatic belts to infer polar wandering (Hallam, 1973, pp. 7-9). In later editions of his book, Wegener cites new evidence, especially in the field of paleoclimatology (Hallam, 1973, p. 17). Seusss Tertiary model of contraction was vulnerable to these critiques and by the 1920s gravity, petrological, and seismic data indicated that denser material was under the ocean floor than under the continents. Biological and paleontological evidence - such as the fossil range of the Permian Mesosaurus in south Africa and Brazil, the distribution of the late Paleozoic plant Glossopteris, early Tertiary marsupials in Australia and South America, and the affinity of developed characteristics in families of earthworms provided stronger and stronger evidence for Pangaea rather than now submerged land bridges (Hallam, 1973, pp. 14-17). The continental plates, once thought to be 24 miles thick are now thought to be less than 3 miles thick. The mapping of the sea floors has increased our understanding of seafloor spreading and the plate tectonics theory asserts that a plate can have both oceanic and continental parts. The Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old and we understand that other planets have been or continue to be geologically active in similar ways. Still, we do not have a definite theory of what drives the magma machine we skate on (National Geographic: Amazing Planet, Episode 1 - Born of Fire, 2005). Currently, the two main hypotheses seem to involve leftover energy and heat from the early bombardment of solar system formation trying to escape from the core and radioactive decay from elements like Uranium creating heat and slowing the cooling of the interior core. While in elementary school, we were taught the Plate Tectonics theory as if it had always been true and known since people figured out the world wasnt flat. Exploring the history of the evolution of the idea helps me to realize how much of our technological world I take for granted when thinking of

the past. Beyond that, looking at the earth sciences from a historical perspective helps me imagine how different our worldview may be in the next few hundred years. Investigation and innovation continues, and what we think is true today may be radically updated and revised at anytime a meditation that is both humbling and inspiring.

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Works Cited
Hallam, A. (1973). A Revolution in the Earth Sciences: From Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. National Geographic: Amazing Planet, Episode 1 - Born of Fire (2005). [Motion Picture]. Turning Points in the Physical Sciences - Program One 130 - 1819 (2005). [Motion Picture].