- In 1912 Alfred Wegener propounded the theory of continental drift to describe the present arrangement of continents and ocean basins.
- He postulated a massive super continent Pangaea that existed 220 million years ago.
- Pangaea, the hypothetical continent, from which present continents originated by the drift from Mesozoic era to the present.
Wegener hypothesized that the super continent of Pangaea broke up to from :
a) Laurensia – consisting of present North America, Greenland and all of Eurasia north of Indian subcontinent and
b) Gondwana land – consisting of present South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Malaysia, East Indies, Australia and Antarctica.
- These two blocks were separated by a long shallow inland sea called Tethys sea.
- It took millions of years for the continents to reach the present shapes and positions on the globe.
- Even today many of the continents are moving very slowly pushing each other.
