Continental drift

Continental drift is the hypothesis, originating in the early 20th century, that Earth's continents move or drift relative to each other over geologic time.^[1] The hypothesis of continental drift has since been validated and incorporated into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere.^[2]

The speculation that continents might have "drifted" was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. A pioneer of the modern view of mobilism was the Austrian geologist Otto Ampferer.^[3][4] The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in his 1915 publication, "The Origin of Continents and Oceans".^[5] However, at that time the hypothesis was rejected by many for lack of any motive mechanism. The English geologist Arthur Holmes later proposed mantle convection for that mechanism.