What proof do we have of pangaea? Is carbon dating the best tool to use to unlock the past?

Question

What proof do we have of pangaea? Is carbon dating the best tool to use to unlock the past?

Answer 1

The fact that the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle with 95% plus accuracy. Plus that some rocks on some continent could not possibly have been from that land. Carbon dating is a very useful tool, but so is the other methods of geology, such as rock analysis and layering.

Answer 2

The oldest evidence is from fossils in W.Africa and the east american coast which are 100's of millions of years old. They are the same.

The mid-atlantic ridge was found in the 1950's from sonar data. it's a ridge right down the center.

The most recent proof is from the accuracy we get from GPS satellites. The Atlantic is spreading apart at about 2.5cm per year. At that rate, it would take about 200million years to go 3000 miles.

Answer 3

in the early 1900s two scientists, the American F.B. Taylor and the German Alfred Wegener, put forward a theory called Continental Drift.

they pointed out similarities between the shapes of the continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic and suggested that North America had once been joined to Europe and South America to Africa. but somehow they had broken apart and drifted to their present positions.

similar rocks, rock structures and fossils were found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. one fossil plant, called glossopteris flourished in the Carboniferous and Permian periods.

fossils of this plant were found in India and in all southern continents. but glossopteris had heavy seeds which winds could not have blown far. how then did this plant spread around these widely separated areas?

supporters of continental drift answered that the land areas had once been linked.

but most scientists did not support the theory. they argued that no one could explain the tremendous force that would be needed to move continents.

Answer 4

East coast N.A.

West coast Africa

fit together with 95+% accuracy...

Answer 5

95% of percentages are made up.

Answer 6

Its writen in the rocks and geologists have a pretty good fix on how the read the rocks.

Answer 7

The idea that the continents might actually be moving has been around a long time.  In fact, Wegener proposed an entire theory of continental drift in 1912.  

He suggested that the Earth’s continental crusts consisted of numerous “plates” of various sizes which were continuing to move over the Earth’s surface, and that about 200 million years ago, most of these had in fact formed, at least temporarily, a single gigantic land mass (which came to be called “Pangaea”).  This “supercontinent” had since split up and slowly drifted apart.  (Prior to this, presumably, a number of smaller continental plates had come together to form “Pangaea” in the first place.)

Considerable and diverse evidence was offered to support Wegener’s theory: geological evidence (based on rock strata); climatological evidence (related to glaciation patterns); and paleontological evidence (based on fossils of long extinct animals/plants).  Still, Wegener’s theory was not taken very seriously because it included no mechanism to explain how such huge land masses might actually be caused to move.

It has been proven that the Earth's present continents were once together as a Pangaea as seen from:

Continental Coastlines Appearing To Fit Together

One prominent example of continental coastline fitting together is to fit the coastline of the West Coast of Africa with the coastline East Coast of South America. It can be seen that they fit well, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This helps to prove that these continents were once joined together as one whole Pangaea and broke away to form these two land masses now.

Fossil Distribution

Matching fossil of reptiles have been found in Africa and South America, further proving that these two continents were actually so close to each other or even joined, that reptiles could travel to and fro between them easily. Identical fossil ferns have also been found in all southern continents, and also embedded in the same layer sequence, suggesting the proximity the southern continents were in millions of years ago that allowed the growing of these ferns in the same climate and soil.

Distinctive Rock Strata

Geologists have discovered that the geological structures of the rocks in South West Africa and South East Brazil were distinctively identical, and the age of the rocks at these two areas was the same. This distinctive rock strata shared by the two land masses suggests that these two areas were once joined together.

Coal Distribution

Coal can be found underneath the cold and dry Antarctic ice cap, though coal can only form in warm and wet conditions. This could mean that Antarctica was once together with the other continents as part of the Pangaea, and was once in a warm and humid region. Coal was formed before Antarctica drifted away to its present cold and dry climate. That is why the coal can be found buried under the thick layer of ice and snow.