Alfred Wegener Investigates Continental Drift

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Alfred Wegener InvestigatesContinental Drift
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Alfred Wegener Observed

• He observed that South America and Africa fit
  together like puzzle pieces.

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Alfred Wegener Researched

• As he began to conduct research he found that
  Brazil and Africa had fossils of extinct animals
  that were the same!

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Plant Fossils, too

• He found extinct plants had left their fossils in
  both Africa and Brazil.

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Tropical Plants in the Arctic

• Wegener found that tropical plants such a ferns
  that growing in areas around the equator had left
  fossils on an island in the arctic which is near
  the North Pole.

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Wegener Posed Questions

• How could rocks be exactly the same in Brazil and
  Africa?
• How could fossils the exactly the same in Brazil
  and Africa?
• How could tropical fossils be found at the North
  Pole?

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Wegener Inferred

• Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents must
  move.
• He thought that at one time the continents must
  have all been connected in one big super
  continent.
• He called that super continent Pangaea