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Comparing Pangea And Wegener's Analysis

Decent Essays

Wegener believed that the continents conformed into a full unit at one point, similar to that of a puzzle. This idea of a single, large continent came to be known as Pangea, which in translation, means ‘all-earth.’ Wegner also brought forth the idea that throughout the Jurassic period, Pangea split into two smaller supercontinents, called Laurasia and Gondwanaland. On the other hand, Wegener did not acquire an explanation for how the continents were capable of moving around the planet. Researchers today, however, are able to explain that. For example, Nicholas van der Elst, a seismologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, explains that the driving force behind plate tectonics is convection in

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