January 6: Wegener presented a theory of continental drift (1912)

The tectonic plates of the world

German geophysicist Alfred Lothar Wegener first presented his theory of continental drift, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. Wegener noticed significant consistency of large landmasses of the Earth based on the study of rock types, geological structures and fossils and believed that the continents could fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. However, his theory was not accepted until 1950 when a number of discoveries supporting his theory were made. In 1950s and 1960s, researchers at Cambridge University and Imperial College in the UK pioneered the science of paleomagnetism, which provided evidence for Wegener's theory. Based on several developments in geology in 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics was developed and the theory of Wegener provided the foundation of the theory of plate tectonics.