Alfred Wegener had long wondered about the striking similarities between the coasts of South America and Africa. In 1912, he proposed the theory of continental drift, which stated that continents slowly move over time. At the time, his theory was widely ridiculed and rejected by the scientific community. However, over the following decades, evidence for continental drift continued to mount, and by the 1960s, the theory had been largely accepted.

Wegener's key evidence for continental drift included the matching shapes of the coastlines of South America and Africa, as well as the similarity of rock types and fossils found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He also pointed to the presence of glacial deposits and coal seams in locations that would have been far from the poles during the time they were formed.

Despite the compelling evidence, Wegener's theory was initially rejected because he could not provide a viable mechanism to explain how the continents could move. At the time, the prevailing view was that the Earth's crust was fixed and unchanging. Wegener's idea that the continents could plow through solid rock was considered absurd.

It was not until the 1960s, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics, that scientists were able to provide a plausible explanation for continental drift. The theory of plate tectonics states that the Earth's crust is divided into several large, rigid plates that move relative to one another. These plates are driven by the convection of the Earth's molten interior, which causes the plates to drift apart at mid-ocean ridges and collide at subduction zones, where one plate is pushed beneath another.

The theory of plate tectonics not only explained how the continents could move, but also provided a framework for understanding a wide range of geological phenomena, such as the formation of mountains, the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the distribution of mineral resources.

Today, the theory of plate tectonics is widely accepted by the scientific community, and it has become a fundamental principle of modern geology. Wegener's original theory of continental drift, though initially rejected, laid the groundwork for this revolutionary understanding of the dynamic nature of the Earth's surface.

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