Question

give an outline of the distribution of continent and oceans of the world.

Answer 1

The symmetry of the coastlines on either side of the ocean. No wonder,manyscientists thought of this

similarity and considered the possibility of the

two Americas, Europe and Africa, to be once

joined together. From the known records of the

history of science, it was Abraham Ortelius, a

Dutch map maker, who first proposed such a

possibility as early as 1596. Antonio Pellegrini

drew a map showing the three continents together.

However, it was Alfred Wegener—a German

meteorologist who put forth a comprehensive

argument in the form of “the continental drift

DISTRIBUTION OF OCEANS

AND CONTINENTS

CHAPTER

theory” in 1912. This was regarding the

distribution of the oceans and the continents.

According to Wegener, all the continents

formed a single continental mass and mega

ocean surrounded the same. The super

continent was named PANGAEA, which meant

all earth. The mega-ocean was called

PANTHALASSA, meaning all water. He argued

that, around 200 million years ago, the super

continent, Pangaea, began to split. Pangaea first

broke into two large continental masses as

Laurasia and Gondwanaland forming the

northern and southern components

respectively. Subse-quently, Laurasia and

Gondwanaland continued to break into various

smaller continents that exist today. A variety of

evidence was offered in support of the

continental drift. Some of these are given below.

Evidence in Support of the Continental Drift

The Matching of Continents (Jig-Saw-Fit)

The shorelines of Africa and South America

facing each other have a remarkable and

unmistakable match. It may be noted that a

map produced using a computer programme

to find the best fit of the Atlantic margin was

presented by Bullard in 1964. It proved to be

quite perfect. The match was tried at 1,000-

fathom line instead of the present shoreline.

Rocks of Same Age Across the Oceans

The radiometric dating methods developed in

the recent period have facilitated correlating the

rock formation from different continents across

Answer 2

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