Wegener died at the early age of 50 on an arctic expedition at Eismitte in Greenland. Alfred Wegener (18801930) became internationally known for his heavily disputed theory of continental drift, which he formulated as early as 1912. With the discovery of new paleomagnetic evidence in the 1950s, and especially with the development of plate tectonics in the 1960s, Wegener's theory of continental drift eventually became widely accepted.

Later the theory fell into obscurity because Wegener’s drift mechanism was shown to be untenable. Alfred Wegener (November 1, 1880November 1930) was a German meteorologist and geophysicist who developed the first theory of continental drift and formulated the idea that a supercontinent known as Pangaea existed on the Earth millions of years ago. Wegener’s theory attracted little interest until 1919, when he published the second edition of his treatise Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane.īetween 19 continental drift was the focus of much controversy and debate. Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German scientist who specialized in meteorology and climatology. He postulated that 200 million years ago there existed a supercontinent (“Pangaea”), which began to break up during the Mesozoic era due to the cumulative effects of the “Eötvös force,” which drives continents towards the equator, and the tidal attraction of the sun and moon, which drags the earth’s crust westward with respect to its interior. Wegener originated the theory of continental drift in this paper on the origin of continents, which he conceived after being struck by the apparent correspondence in the shapes of the coastlines on the west and east sides of the Atlantic, and supported with extensive research on the geological and paleontological correspondences between the two sides. They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils. He backed up his theory by many observations and similarities of fossils in different parts of the continents. The Pangaea broke up and drifted to form all those continents you see today. His theory suggested that Earth was a one big supercontinent called Pangaea. In 1912 German scientist, geophysicist, and meteorologist Alfred Wegener published from Gotha, Germany 'Die Entstehung der Kontinente' in Mitteilung aus Justus Perthes’ geographischer Anstalt 58 (1912): 185-195 253-256 305-309. Alfred Lotha Wagener is best known for his work in geology that led him to propose his. Alfred Wegener,in the first three decades of this century, and DuToitin the 1920s and 1930s gathered evidence that the continents had moved. Alfred Wegener was a German scientist who suggested the theory of continental drift.

Alfred wegner