Paper Animation Tells Curious Story of How a Meteorologist Theorized Pangaea & Continental Drift (1910)

Over a cen­tu­ry ago, the Ger­man mete­o­rol­o­gist Alfred Wegen­er (1880–1930) put forth a the­o­ry that changed how we look at an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline — geol­o­gy. He argued that the con­ti­nents once formed a sin­gle land­mass called “Pan­gaea,” and that con­ti­nen­tal drift moved them apart slow­ly but ever so sure­ly. The sto­ry of how a mete­o­rol­o­gist changed the face of geol­o­gy gets told in a nice paper ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by The New York Times. It comes nar­rat­ed by Mott Greene (author of the forth­com­ing book Alfred Wegen­er: Sci­ence, Explo­ration and the The­o­ry of Con­ti­nen­tal Drift) and Nao­mi Oreskes, Pro­fes­sor of the His­to­ry of Sci­ence at Har­vard. You can read the NYTimes arti­cle asso­ci­at­ed with the edu­ca­tion­al video here. Cours­es on geol­o­gy can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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