continental drift - National Geographic Society Privacy Policy . Some of the fossil evidence discovered on the continents includes mesosaurus, lystosaurus, cygnognathus and glossopteris. Continental Drift As lava cools, tiny iron-rich crystals line up with Earths magnetic field. The plate tectonic revolution had taken hold. 2. It is important to know that the following specific fossil evidence was not brought up by Wegener to support his theory. ? In 1959, Harry Hess proposed the hypothesis of seafloor spreading that the mid-ocean ridges represented tectonic plate factories, where a new oceanic plate was issuing from these long volcanic ridges. WebPaleoclimatology has been wedded to continental drift from its first presentation. The two paths merge into one if the continents are allowed to drift. Salt evaporites/beds in cold parts of U.S.A, Britain, Germany and Russia is evidence for continental drift from tropics because salt evaporites occur in tropics Proximity of continental land masses to the North Pole than in South Pole. Answers for geologist, scientists, spacecraft operators. because it is unlikely that the mesosaurus could swim between continents. Modern day representation of the Glossopteris. Magnetite crystals are like tiny magnets that point to the north magnetic pole as they crystallize from magma. Modern day representation of the Cynognathus. Lystrosaurus, on the other hand, was located in Africa, India, and Antarctica. ; This theory was set set up by Alfred The seafloor drilling system led to the evidence that supports the seafloor-spreading hypothesis. WebGlacial Deposits. Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents were once united into a single supercontinent named Pangaea, meaning all earth in ancient Greek. When the rock cools and solidifies, this alignment is frozen into place, creating a permanent paleomagnetic record that includes magnetic inclination related to global latitude, and declination related to magnetic north. This process, called subduction, occurs at the oceanic trenches (figure 6). However, the location they point to is not the current north magnetic pole. Eventually, scientists realized adding the idea of continental movement explained the data better than the pole movement alone [21].