The main criticism of Wegener’s idea was that he could not explain how continents could move. Remember that, as far as anyone was concerned,

Wegener first published his ideas in 1912 in a short book called Die Entstehung der Kontinente (The Origin of Continents), and then in 1915 in Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans). He revised this book several times up to 1929. It was translated into French, English, Spanish, and Russian in 1924.

He concluded that because these organisms could not have crossed the oceans to get from one continent to the next, the continents must have been joined in the past, permitting the animals to move from one to the other

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930; Figure 4.2) earned a PhD in astronomy at the University of Berlin in 1904, but had a keen interest in geophysics and meteorology, and focused on meteorology for much of his academic career.

The Paleozoic era was dominated by marine organisms, but by the middle of the era, plants and animals had evolved to live and reproduce on land, including amphibians and reptiles.

These first well-preserved fossils are photosynthetic microbial mats, called stromatolites, found in Australia [41].

The outermost part of the solar system is known as the Kuiper belt, which is a scattering of rocky and icy bodies.

Because the light wavelengths of receding objects are extended, visible light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, called a redshift.

Some groups of people argue that some established scientific theories are wrong, not based on their scientific merit but rather on the ideology of the group. This section focuses on how to identify evidence-based information and differentiate it from pseudoscience.

When rocks are subjected to extreme increases in temperature or pressure, the mineral crystals are enlarged or altered into entirely new minerals with similar chemical makeup.

Geology plays a key role in how we use natural resources—any naturally occurring material that can be extracted from the Earth for economic gain. Our developed modern society, like all societies before it, is dependent on geologic resources. Geologists are involved in extracting fossil fuels, such as coal and petroleum; metals such as copper, aluminum, and iron; and water resources in streams and underground reservoirs inside soil and rocks.

uniformitarianism

Hutton realized if these processes formed rocks, then the Earth must be very old, possibly hundreds of millions of years old

One major contributor was Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686), a Danish priest who studied anatomy and geology. Steno was the first to propose the Earth’s surface could change over time. He suggested sedimentary rocks, such as sandstone and shale, originally formed in horizontal layers with the oldest on the bottom and progressively younger layers on top

A=B, and B=C, then A=C. Another example is if all birds have feathers, and a sparrow is a bird, then a sparrow must also have feathers. The problem with deductive reasoning is if the initial principle is flawed, the conclusion will inherit that flaw. Here is an example of a flawed initial principle leading to the wrong conclusion; if all animals that fly are birds, and bats also fly, then bats must also be birds.

After a hypothesis has been repeatedly tested for falsifiability through documented and independent studies, it eventually becomes accepted as a scientific theory.

Modern science is based on the scientific method, a procedure that follows these steps:

Scientists tend to wait until a hypothesis is supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence from many independent researchers before accepting it as a scientific theory