Wegener’s Shoes Writing Assignment
Most may believe the world has always been the way it is now, separated into seven continents far from each other and that’s never changed. What if I told you about continental drift? What if I told you that at one point the land of the world was all connected into one continent called Pangea? Well that might just be the case and I am going to prove to you why.
To start out with, when looking at a map of the world, it is clear that parts of the world look like they can fit perfectly together like a puzzle piece. The bump on the coast of eastern South America and the indent on the coast of western Africa are nearly identical and look like they once were connected. These continents are almost 3000 kilometres so it would be a crazy coincidence if they happen to look like a puzzle piece without ever having been connected to each other.
The second piece of evidence is that fossils have been found of the same creature on different continents that could not have possibly swum across the oceans. The Lystrosaurus, for example, is one where fossils have been found is different continents like, Antarctica, South America, and Africa. The Lystrosaurus is one that was not capable of swimming or flying, so how did they exist on separate continents? This is because they all existed on one continent, Pangea, until it broke up into the continents we see today. Other extinct animals like the Cynognathus has been found in multiple continents like Africa and South America, or the Lystrosaurus which has been found in both Antarctica and India.
Thirdly, the climate around the world we know today doesn’t quite match up to the nature around it. Glaciers have been found in some of the warmest areas around the world, so why is there glaciers there? Because they were once considered the coldest areas. Also tropical plants have been found in areas we now consider the arctic. The movement of the continents have been consistent, meaning that the warm areas of the world that have glaciers, like Africa, South America and Australia, are consistently moving away from Antarctica, which they were once connected to.
Lastly, mountain ranges seem to continue on through continents. The Appalachian Mountains stretch from Southeast Canada, to the Southern part of the United States of America. But mountain in Ireland, Britain, and Scandinavia have been proven to have originated from the same mountain range. This means that at one point in time these mountains were connected, and the continents were connected.
The worlds geography we know today, was not always like this, and once existed as one supercontinent known as Pangea, this is proven with the continents looking like they fit together perfectly, the same fossils being found on different sides of the world, the climate being inconsistent with the surrounding environment, and mountain ranges thousands of kilometers away from each other being proven to have once been connected.