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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