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>I mention Alfred Wegener, the balloonist who proposed that the continents must have drifted, given how clearly their coastlines fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Blinded by scientific precepts, what is now plainly obvious to any child who glances at a map of South America and Africa Problem: coastline shape is a dependent variable. Amount of water is the independent. Looking at S.America and Africa only makes a jigsaw puzzle in modern times. During the ice ages, will those continents still look like a match? I say no. Furthermore, continental drift has pulled these contienents apart. When they eventually collide, there will be mountain building, much like the Pyrenees, or the Himalayas. Also, South America is on the ring of fire, a subduction zone. Ocean floors are erupted basalts, which are pushed over to the continental trenches where they, being heavy and dense, are pushed down into the mantle. Seawater as well. This seawater reduces the density of the basalts, and as they melt in the mantle, the magma is forced upwards. Pumice is an extreme example of this, but continental granites and anthracites are formed in this fashion. These rocks make up the vast majority of the continental crust. Diamonds in Africa suggest that the core of the continent is ancient and very hard rock known as kratons. Rock drifts into these structres and sticks there. creating a continent via accumulation. They root deep in the mantle, Im actually unsure if they move via drift. The diamonds are created at their base, and slowly percolate up to the surface. These rocks are on the order of 2-3 billion years old. Finally, not all continent building happens at subduction zones. Giant blobs of magma called mantle plumes bubble up from the mantle and massively heat the crust that moves over them. Iceland is one such place where this is happening. Hawaii, another. Scotland clearly was wildly volcanic at one point, until it drifted away from the plume. What's the point here? Well, the shape of these places is a complete fluke. They do not fit like any jigsaw. The proof of continental drift is that we see fossils of giant land animals, as well as flora on both continents. There is no way they could have floated over on some sticks, or whatnot. Creatures living in an arid landlocked area roamed freely over these continents, until most likely a mantle plume pushed began to break up that supercontinent. Such plumes are more likely to occur when all the landmassses of the earth are together. Regardless, does it count if you looked at those continents because of erroneous deduction, only to find the proof that the same populations of creatures inhabited both distant ( in the present day ) places? Again, I would say no. |
This isn't quite correct. The continental shelf maintains the general shape of the land above it. Any amount of lowering from ice ages is still going to be within the shelf break and give the same outline.