Continental drift first captured my imagination in elementary school. The front page of a particular Weekly Reader featured a drawing of the earth floating in space. But this globe showed the continents all bunched together in a single landmass scientists called Pangaea. Of course! Why hadn't I noticed that the Atlantic coastlines of the Americas, Europe, and Africa fit together so perfectly, like pieces of a planetary jigsaw puzzle? The article announced that finally, after many years of investigation, scientists had enough evidence to show that, indeed, continents drift. We were witnessing a major revolution in science, what philosophers call a paradigm shift. For in the middle 1960s, the idea of continental drift was at the tipping point of acceptance by the scientific community.

In Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet, author Ted Nield writes that the long and convoluted history of continental drift is actually three stories. The first story is about the scientific work that led to the modern geological paradigm of plate tectonics. Nield is keen to make this a story about people, including some of the most colorful scientists and explorers of the 20th century. The second thread is the story of earth history, with its changing geography, climate, and ecology.[1] The third thread might be the most interesting to many readers, as Nield explores how Pangaea belongs to the company of "lost continents" that have captured imaginations, even fueled religious convictions, from Aristotle's Atlantis to the new age Mu. Nield weaves a thorough history of plate tectonics for popular audiences, drawing from historians of science (including Naomi Oreskes) and his personal relationships with contemporary workers at the cutting edge of research and discovery. As editor of Geoscientist, the magazine for Fellows of the Geological Society of London, Nield knows the material intimately and communicates it in a compelling manner.

The theory of plate tectonics is one ...

Add your comment *