Short Paragraph on Continental Drift Theory

Here is your short paragraph on Continental Drift Theory !

The major surface fea­tures of the earth are the continents and ocean ba­sins. Of the whole surface, less than one third is a land mass and the rest is covered with water.

For several million years, large parts of the conti­nents were covered with thick masses of ‘ice’, as Greenland and Antarctica still are.

This period is known as ice age. The ice-sheets melted, raising the sea level to the present situation. But when the sea level was lower, North America and Asia were con­nected by dry land where today exists the Bering Strait.

Alfred Wegener in 1924 propagated the theory of continental drift. According to this theory, nearly 150 million years ago, there was a single continent on earth known as ‘pangaea’ which broke into sev­eral pieces and began to drift apart. North and South America pulled away from Africa and Eurasia and drifted to the west.

This resulted in formation of the Rockies and Andes due to wrinkling of the western edge. In between the two continental blocks, America and Africa, the Atlantic basin appeared. Antarctica, Australia, peninsular India and Madagascar were neatly nested together close to the southern tip of South Africa.

Again they drifted to the present posi­tion, giving way to Indian Ocean basin. Initially this theory was not acceptable but it has now been estab­lished by the theory of ‘plate tectonics’ that, conti­nents are moving as plateaus, on a semi-liquid sur­face which supports the continental drift theory.