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Wegener said that of all those theories, Taylor's had the most similarities to his own. For a time in the mid-20th century, the theory of continental drift was referred to as the "Taylor-Wegener hypothesis". [26] [29] [30] [31] Alfred Wegener first presented his hypothesis to the German Geological Society on 6 January 1912. [5]
But Wegener only published his idea after reading a paper in 1911 which criticised the prevalent hypothesis, that a bridge of land once connected Europe and America, on the grounds that this contradicts isostasy. [20] Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid-1912.
[8] [9] Although Alfred Wegener noticed some similarities to his own hypothesis of continental drift, he did not mention Earth expansion as the cause of drift in Mantovani's hypothesis. [10] A compromise between Earth-expansion and Earth-contraction is the "theory of thermal cycles" by Irish physicist John Joly.
Alfred Wegener advanced the theory of continental drift, a fringe theory which was later adopted by mainstream science. Most fringe theories never become part of established scholarship. [17] Rejected ideas may help to refine mainstream thought, [30] but most outside theories are simply incorrect and have no wider impact. [17]
Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener later credited a number of past authors with similar ideas: [18] Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890), [19] Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907) [20] and Frank Bursley Taylor (1908). [21]
This theory was launched by Arthur Holmes and some forerunners in the 1930s [21] and was immediately recognized as the solution for the acceptance of the theory as originally discussed in the papers of Alfred Wegener in the early years of the 20th century. However, despite its acceptance, it was long debated in the scientific community because ...
It has been known for a long time that the stones came from further than 12 miles away, but the long-distance links boost the theory that Stonehenge served a unifying purpose in ancient Britain.
The root of this was Alfred Wegener's 1912 publication of his theory of continental drift, which was a controversy in the field through the 1950s. [2] At that point scientists introduced new evidence in a new way, replacing the idea of continental drift with instead a theory of plate tectonics. [2]