Hypothesis Of Continental Drift How Ocean Floor Support

Sea floor spreading further supports the continental drift theory.

Hypothesis of continental drift how ocean floor support.

The continental drift hypothesis was developed in the early part of the 20th century mostly by alfred wegener. These plates float atop an underlying rock layer called the asthenosphere. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. It never became a theory.

In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Scientists agree that continents rest on rocks called tectonic plates which shift and move. Continental drift large scale horizontal movements of continents relative to one another and to the ocean basins during one or more episodes of geologic time. According to continental drift theory there existed one big landmass which he called pangaea which was covered by one big ocean called panthalassa.

A sea called tethys divided the pangaea into two huge landmasses. Plates are composed of lithosphere about 100 km thick that float on the ductile asthenosphere. Plate tectonics by combining the sea floor spreading theory with continental drift and information on global seismicity the new theory of plate tectonics became a coherent theory to explain crustal movements. T f wegener proposed the continental drift hypothesis suggesting the contents are in constant motion on the surface of the earth.

Mid ocean ridges do not support continental drift at all. Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics. Hess proposes sea floor spreading 1960. The theory of plate tectonics is supported by mid ocean ridges because the mid ocean ridges provide a mechanism for replacement of subducted oceanic crust.

Continental drift was an hypothesis without a mechanism. Another indication of continental drift is tectonic activity and seafloor spreading. Wegener said that continents move around on earth s surface and that they were once joined together as a single supercontinent. Alfred wegener s idea of continental drift looked less ludicrous than his contemporaries had thought.

True t f alternating magnetic bands on the ocean floor are evidence that earth s magnetic field changes. There still seemed to be no way that continents. Read more on this topic.