Before the formation of modern plate tectonics theory, there existed a number of other explanations for how the earth’s topography came to be. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the idea of catastrophism was predominant, explaining the features of Earth’s surface as the results of biblical catastrophes. This gradually gave way to uniformitarianism during the 19th century, a concept put forward by British geologists James Hutton and Charles Lyell. According to this idea, processes that are occurring presently on Earth have to have also been happening throughout geologic time. A particularly important uniformitarian concept, first suggested by F.B. Taylor in 1910, is that of continental drift. This is the idea that continents can move and have done so in the past. Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, in particular pioneered this theory, amassing information throughout this life to support continental drift, including the continuity of structures and fossils across continents. However, he lacked a mechanism to explain how the continents moved, leading to continental drift being dismissed for a number of years. However, following the proposal of seafloor spreading as a mechanism by R.S. Dietz in 1961 and its verification by the presence of magnetic stripes on the seafloor, the concept of continental drift became accepted. This formed the base for the theory of plate tectonics.
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