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Cartographer Abraham Ortelius first suggest that continents appear to fit together like a puzzle and theorized they were once one continent.
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Meteorologist and Geophysicist Alfred Wegener proposed a theory of continental displacement where all the continents were once a supercontinent he called Pangea. His theory though was largely dismissed because he was unable to define an engine that moved the continents.
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Geologist Arthur Holmes theorized that convectional currents in the mantle are the driving force that moves the continents. Though his ideas were also widely ignored by he scientific community.
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Geophysicist Harry H. Hess and Robert S. Dietz described a phenomenon called seafloor spreading where the seafloor spreads from mid-ocean ridges and plunges beneath th contintents which when combined with Arthur Holmes and Alfred Wegeners theories combined to form the modern Tectonic Theory.