Pangaea is interesting

1. West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Saturday 22 March 1952, page 3
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49022347
Origin Of The Continents:
Did      
IABY JONATIAN SAULT
As long ago as 1858 an im
aginative Englishman named
Edguin Ponce
noticed that the vari
ous continents of the world
fitted together in a remarkable
way. North and South Ameri
ca, for instance, fitted very]
convincingly into the west
coast of Africa; and.Australia
into the east coast.
In 1910 another Englishman,
the geologist F. B. Taylor,, put
forward the notion that the
.on
tinents
may lave drifted apart
from an original: central land
mass; However; it
was left to the
famnous Germpn geologist, the
late Professor Alfred Lother
Wegener, to pull all the facts
and speculations into a coherent
--and highly controversial
theory of great fascination.
This he did in 1915 in his now
historic work-"The Origin of
Continents and
Oceans."
It
might just. as.-well have been
called 'The Mystery of the Lost
Continents."
Since the world. was created
some 2,500,000,000 years ago
natural processes have been at
work wearing down the surface
rocks and
washing them down
into the lowlands and the sea.
The layers of the rock formed
from such silt and mud are
known as the sedimentary lay
ers;. and the lowest layers are
about 1,500,000,000 years old.
Under these is
granite, between
ten and 30 miles thick; and an

2. West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Saturday 22 March 1952, page 3 (2)
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49022347
Did the continents drift apart from an original central land moss. Here the continents have been
fitted together to illustrate the Wegener theory.
der them all is the basalt rock,
of which the main core of the
earth is made.
Strangely
'
eiogh---and the
significance we shall see in a
moment-the ocean floor has
only a very thin layer of sedi
ment, consisting of dead sea life.
Otherwise the sea-bottom
is
basalt.
Like Rafts
The picture we get, then, is the
following: A number of contin
ents resting on a foundation of
primeval basalt rock. It is
only
a small step further to imagine
that, as the inner part of the
earth's basalt core (the so-called
Magma Zone) is a semi-molten
sticky mass, the granite contin
ents '"loat" in it
like rafts on a
lake of liquid pitch.
And this is where the Wegener
-Theory
gets goingl Professor
Wegener pointed out that, al
though a continent is
many
though a continent is
many
thousands of square' miles in
area,
it is,
comparatively, ex
tremely thin (about 25 miles).
This would suggest a strong ten
dency to crack under tension.
And, in fact, said Professor
Wegener; this is what did hap
pen.
Up to about 150 million years
ago (according to Prog. Wege
ier), the woild consisted of one
single land mass-the world
continent of Pangaea, as the
Wegenerites call it--surrounded
by one single world-ocean.
Great Break-Up
Then one day, after millions of
years of tensions--caused per
haps by atomic explosions in the
earth's centre, earthquakes, the
.direction
of the earth's rotation,
,ands
o.i)y, n
.the,,
€ac :
.
the
sea tha on nd-P ibe-,
gan to crack up, and the con
nd-P
gan to crack up, and the con
tinents so formed to move away
from each other-a process
which has gone on ever since
and, apparently,
is'still
going on.
Over great periods of time our
continents move all over the
fae of the globe, thus giving rise
to'
an alteration of ice-ages and
1Orpical periods as recorded by
the fossil' plants and animals in
the-sedimentary rocks.
Africa, India, South. America,
Australia and Antarctica, all to
gether, in the first stage of the
great Break Up, split
away from
Pangaea to form a huge southern
continent, which modern geolo
gists know as Gondwanaland.
Today, the separate parts of
Gondwanaland--India, South
America, Australia and Africa
allpoint towards the South Pole
continent of Antarctica.
The other main land masses we
know today-the North Ameri

3. West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Saturday 22 March 1952, page 3 (3)
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49022347
know today-the North Ameri
can continent, Europe and Asia
-form the other half of Pan
gaea. This northern landmass is
known to geologists as Laurasia.
The Glaciers.
So much for the bare bones of
Prof. Wegener's theory of Con
tinential Diift Let us now try
to put some flesh on the skeleton;
Firstly, there is the evidence of
the glaciers. All over Gondwada
land there were once glaciers,
and ice-ages, even in those areas
which are today in the tropics.
The startling fact which emerges
from all the glacial evidence.
concerning this ancient contin
ent is that all the glaciers appar
ently moved away from the
equator. But as ice can only
move towards a warmer zone,
this evidence can only mean that
the geographical positions of the
continents making up Gond
wanaland then had a very differ
ent geographical position in re
lation to the equator. In other
words-they have drifted! (The
fact that the deep sea-bottom
is
basalt-rock supports this view.)
Secondly, not only do the con
tinents make a good
fit
together,
as realised by Snyder in 1858,
but the great mountain ranges of
the continents also form a uni
form system. The Appalachian
Mountains of the United States
and the Mendip Hills and other
mountain ranges in England, for
instance, are of the same rock
formation.
Mountain Ranges
Thirdly,. the chain of rivers,
seas and lakes extending from
Palestine to Central Africa-the
River Jordan; the Dead Sea, the
Red Sea, and the big lakes of
East Africa down to the Zanibesi
River-form a natural deep
trench. Prof. Wegener's notion
is
that this trench was caused by
the tensions set up when Pan
-
'a split up into Gondwana
land and Laur~sia.
Fourthly, how were the great
mountain ranges formed? Here,
too, the Wegener Theory offers
a very platasible account. In the
final
split-up of the continents,
millions of..years. ago,. Eurasia
millions of..years. ago,. Eurasia
drifting towards the south, had
to stem itself against the pressure
.of
the huge Bass
.of
the African
'On
n ineit; which'ufl'' .rmovn;$
gsyw from the Sbith tPble:
'inthe case of Eurasia and
Africa, the impact caused the
crust of the Earth to
"give"
and
to fold upward. Hence the
Alps, the Caucasus and the
African ranges. Similarly India
drifted north and pressed on the
Asian land mass. The result
here was the Himalaya moun
tains-which, quite independent
ly of the Wegener theory--are
known to be very young in geolo
gical terms.
But the impact of huge land
masses is
not the only cause of
mountain ranges, according to
Wegener. The other main cause
is the increased frontal pres
sure caused by the progress of
the land mass through the sticky
basalt magma (the pressure of
the ocean's water, apparently,
is negligible). In this move
meit the heaviest pressure
is
obviously on the frontal part
of the moving continent. One
would, therefore, expect moun
tain ranges formed by this move
meat to form fairly near the
forward edge of the continent.
The position of the Rocky
Mountains and .the. Andes sup
ports this notion.
Fifthly, the Wegener Theory is
strongly supported by fossil evi
dence: -the distribution of some
animals over the whole of
Gondwanaland, but not in
Laurasia; and others evenly
distributed. over Laurasia, but
non-existent in Gondwanaland.
The lemur, for example, exists
today in four or five widely,
separated parts of Gondwana
land, but not at all in Laur
asia. Is it
not more re
assurable. to believe that the
territories where we today find
the lemur were once joined to
gether, than that they were
separately created in each re
gion? As they existed in all
areas concerned long before
Man (and hence seafaring) ap
peared on earth, the possibility
of migration may be disregard
of migration may be disregard
ed. And why
is it
that certain
birds every year regularly mig
rate over long distances, when
they could find at least equally
favourable conditions much
nearer home without crossing a
large stretch of ocean? A case
in point is
the annual migration
of Canada's plovers to Hawaii.
Today, there are few geologists
who do not subscribe to the
fundamental concepts of con
tinental drift, even when
they'
make serious reservations about
individual parts of Prof. Weg
ener's "case." On the other
hand, no other evidence has
been forthcoming which con
forms so strikingly with ob
served.facts as does the Wegen
er theory.
Incidentally, the theory of con
tinental drift may also offer an
explanation to the myth of the
"sunken continent" of. Atlantis
from which the Atlantic. Ocean
takes its name. If we accept
Prof. Wegener's theory, we as
sume that about 20 million
years ago Great Britain formed
(Continued a Next ColVm.)

4. West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Saturday 22 March 1952, page 3 (4)
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49022347
part of a land mass which had
broken away from the Eurasian
mainland and which was join
ed to the Canadian subcontinent.
This huge chunk of land eventu
ally split up to form Britain,
Scandinavia, Greenland and
Spitzbergen.
In this case the lost continent
of Atlantis has not disappeared
by sinking but by drifting apart.
If, indeed, this were the case,
the fact would raise a very im
portant question: How could the
myth have survived the millions
of years intervening, since At
lantis had drifted apart long be
fore human beings appeared on
the Earth? Or are we wrong
about our estimate of when man
first appeared?