The term continental drift refers to the movement of continental blocks relative to one another across the surface of the earth to their present positions to create continents and ocean basins. The theory of continental drift was based on rifting and drifting of individual landmasses. The theory says the sialic masses emanated from the split of Pangea and they started moving in various directions.

 

Rupturing and drifting started abut 250 million years ago – first split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland with the former further breaking into Northern continents and the latter forming southern continents.

Figure 1: The continents fit together like pieces of a puzzle. This is how they looked about 200 million years ago.

A study of the globe would perhaps real among other things that if the Americans were pushed Eastwards they would almost fit into the shape formed by the coasts of Africa and Europe. Accordingly to many geologists have studied the area and have advanced theories which support the continental drift theory. Many attempts have been made to account for the present distribution of continents and ocean basins. They are divided into two groups of hypothesis.

(a)Hypothesis before the idea of continental drift became accepted as possible.

The moon theory, the moon theory and the convection currents theory.

(b) Hypothesis after continental drift theory was widely accepted as possible.

· F.B Taylor’s theory of continental drift

· Alfred Wegner’s theory of Continental drift.

· H. Hess’ sea floor spreading theory

· Plate tectonics theory.

There movements that have been advanced to explain the distribution of continents. However, only four will be considered for academic purposes.

Perhaps the first man to propose the continental drift theory was Francis Bacon in 1620 when he noted the Jigsaw – like fit between the East coast of south America and the West African coast. In 1668 RP. Francis Placet went further to suggest that prior to the floods America was not separated from the rest of the world.

In 1885 Antonio Snider went even further than Bacon and Placet by drawing two maps of the world. One showing a reconstruction of the world before drifting and the other showing the present day distribution of the continents.

At the end of the nineteth century, the Austrian researcher Edward Suez produced the theory that had once been part of a super continent which he named Gondwanaland after the Gondwana region in India. This idea was completed by the Englishman FB Taylor in 1910 and later a German Called Alfred Wegner.