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Ortelius believed that Africa and South America fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. As time passed, other forms of evidence came out supporting that the continents were once joined as one. -
Created the law of superposition, which was that each layer of rock is older than the layer above it. -
He used Steno’s Law of Superposition, and found that granite was penetrating metaphoric schists, in a way which indicated that the granite had been molten. This showed him that granite formed from cooling of molten rock, not precipitation as others believed at the time, and that the granite must be younger than the schists. -
Introduced the theory of continental drift to the world. His idea was rejected because of missing evidence until 1950 when enough evidence was found to support his theory. -
Worked the most on the relationships between seafloor gravity anomalies, serpentinised peridotite, and island arcs. -
Alfred stumbled upon a scientific paper, that showed fossils of identical plants and animals found on the opposite side of the atlantic. He was intrigued by this information and went to look for, and found more case of similar organisms being separated by water.
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Created the theory that the mantle goes under thermal convection. As magma is heated it tends to rise and then it cools and sinks again. At the time it received very little attention. -
developed the idea that oceanic crust forms along mid-ocean ridges and spreads out laterally away from the ridges. they believed that molten material from the Earth’s mantle continuously wells up along the crests of the mid-ocean ridges that wind for nearly 50,000 miles through all the world’s oceans.
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Proposed that oceans opened and closed throughout Earth’s history. A global network of sensors designed to detect hydroacoustic signals recorded earthquake activity. Scientists later found that earthquakes and volcanic activity occur almost exclusively at the edges of tectonic plates. -
Developed the theory that the lithosphere is divided into a few dozen plates that move across the earth’s surface relative to each other. He wondered since he was young what happened to the Continents and how they fit together like a puzzle.