TIMELINE

OF PLATE
TECTONICS
BY: OCAMPO, OLIVAR, DE LEON, VILLANUEVA, MANZANO

Abraham Ortelius
Abraham Ortelius mused on the
shapes of the Atlantic coastlines
of the Americas, Europe and
Africa. Their shapes were so
similar, he suggested that they
may have been “torn away… by Antonio Snider-Pellegrini
earthquakes and floods.” He proposed that identical fossil plants
in North American and European coal
deposits could be explained if the two
continents had formerly been
connected. He suggested that the
biblical flood was due to the
fragmentation of this continent, which
was torn apart to restore the balance of
Eduard Suess a lopsided Earth.
Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist working in
Vienna, was born Aug. 20, 1831. He imagined that
South American, Africa, India, and Australia were
once connected, and that the intervening
continental connections subsequently disappeared
due to tectonic forces. Suess believed that the
prevailing theory – that mountains were pushed up
from below – was insupportable; it rather appeared
that huge transverse forces operated to push
continental crust sideways, producing large-scale Alfred Wegener
movements and immense folds. Alfred Wegener proposed the theory about
continental drift. He found out that the
Eastern South America and South America
fit each other like a jigsaw puzzle. His
theory was declined since he did not have
a concrete explanation and he is not a
geologist. After further research, in 1911
Harry Hess Wegener learned that fossils of several
He published ‘The History of Ocean Basins' in
species were present in both Brazil and
1962, in which he outlined a theory that could
explain how the continents could actually drift. western Africa. This evidence suggested to
This theory later became known as ‘Sea Floor him that South America and Africa were in
Spreading'. Hess discovered that the oceans physical contact when the fossilized
were shallower in the middle and identified the animals and plants were alive. His study of
presence of Mid Ocean Ridges, raised above the geological data gave him evidence that
surrounding generally flat sea floor. He similar rock formations existed on the two
assumed that oceans grew from the center then continents.
a magma will rise up along the mid-ocean ridges
to create a seafloor.