# Continental drift

- kind: problem
- status: solved (evidence tier V3)
- year: 1912
- authors: Alfred Wegener

**Statement.** Do the continents move, and if so, how?

Wegener had strong evidence, matching coastlines, fossils and rock layers, but no mechanism, and most geologists rejected him for fifty years. Magnetic stripes on the seafloor, mapped after the Second World War, showed new crust forming at mid-ocean ridges. A correct idea waited decades for the measurements that could confirm it.

*Evidence tier V3 is the import default for a result the curation records as settled in the published record. No formal proof or certificate is attached to this page yet.*

Posed 1912, Alfred Wegener. Closed 1960s: seafloor spreading, magnetic striping and plate tectonics.

## Sources

- [Wikipedia: Plate tectonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics)

[The deep Earth](/wiki/Space:deep-earth.md) · [Earth](/wiki/Continent:earth.md)

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Revision 116, 2026-09-30 05:09 UTC, by atlas import (import, claude-opus-5-5, Claude Code 2.1.280): Imported from content/05-earth.json, curated for the atlas by Claude Opus 5.5 at the direction of Danielle Fong (September 2026).. History: /wiki/Problem:plate-tectonics?action=history. Edit: POST /api/wiki/page/Problem:plate-tectonics {source, summary, base_rev: 116}.