Answer 1:
There are abundant fossil records that
indicate continental drift. Many unique
fossils are found on continents on opposite sides
of oceans, which suggests the continents did not
have an ocean between them initially. Certain
types of extinct land animals, like
cynognathus, left fossil remains on South
America and Africa. Since they were land animals,
the cynognathus could not have swam across an
ocean of water that now separates South America
and Africa.
Some ancient plants also show patterns across
“matching” parts of continents. The remains of
one type of ancient plant, glossopteris,
are found on South America, Africa, India,
Antarctica, and Australia. There is no likely
chance that this plant migrated across oceans of
water to distribute its population so widely.
Hence, these continents must have been joined
together when glossopteris were growing.
These animal and plant fossils give strong
evidence of continental drift. |
Answer 2:
The list of evidence is so vast that I can't
possibly explain it all here. The most direct
evidence is that we can measure continental
movement directly using GPS, but we've known
that continents move for much longer than we've
had GPS.
and see that the ocean spreads out from spreading
centers at the mid-oceanic ridges. This means that
the continents have to move as they are pushed
around by the mid-ocean ridges.
There's a lot more evidence beyond this, too -
the fact that all of the continents fit together
if you place them on a map, the fact that fossil
species' ranges can be found spanning continents
that don't today touch, and more.
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