The Crazy Idea

In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed something that got him laughed out of lecture halls: the continents move. He called it continental drift and pointed to a clue everyone noticed but nobody took seriously — South America and Africa fit like puzzle pieces.

Wegener gathered evidence from fossils and ancient climate records. The same fern fossil, Glossopteris, appeared on continents separated by thousands of kilometers. Identical rock sequences matched across South America and Africa. Glacial scratches proved polar origins.