IN ONE OF    professional acts before    Einstein e a sbut gloo a book by a geologist named Citled Earting Crust: A Key to Some Basis of Earteady demolition of t tis ion. In a to all but io joi c a fe corresponden sain tis.” It    Sout be fitted toget is evenclaimed t roations on opposite sides of tlantic match.”

        Mr. ions, noting t ts K. E. Casterand J. C. Mendes ensive fieldlantid ablision t no sucies existed. Goodness knoessrs. Caster and Mendes , beacuse in fact many of tions onbotlanticare t just very similar but the same.

        t a fles of o    propounded in 1908 by an amateur Amerigeologist named Frank Bursley taylor. taylor came from a raints to pursue unventional lines of inquiry. ruck by ty in slines of AfridSoution    tis ed—prestly as it turned out—t togetis could    up tain co producemucoo crackpot to merit seriousattention.

        In Germany, aylor’s idea ively appropriated, by at named Alfred egener, a meteist at ty of Marburg. egeneriigated t and fossil anomalies t did not fit fortably into tandardmodel of Eartory and realized t very little of it made sense if ventionallyinterpreted. Animal fossils repeatedly turned up on opposite sides of os t oo o so Australia?

        ical snails turn up in Sdinavia and Ne,did one at for coal seams and otropical remnants in frigid spots likeSpitsbergen, four    someed therefrom warmer climes?

        egener developed t tis ogeto mingle, before tis    apart and floated off to t positions. All t togetsteie und Ozeane, or tis andOs, break of torld ar in time—in Engliser.

        Because of t attract mucice at first, but by 1920,    quickly became a subject of discussion.

        Everyone agreed t tis moved—but up and do sideical movement, knoasy, ion of geological beliefs feions,to    extbooks o my o before turn of tury. ted t as te ing obasins and mountain ranges. Never mind t James ton    anysucatic arra ually result in a featureless sps. trated by Rutury, t Earts —muuco allo of cooling and sed. And any tains sributed across tently t, and of more or less t by t    t ses, like time unately, Alfred ege geologists .

        For a start, ions questioions of tive o gee , but egener eist, foodness sake. A remediable deficies.

        And so geologists took every pain to dismiss tleions. to get around tributions, ted a “landbridges” ime, a land bridge lantic.     aapirs ed simultaneously in Sout Asia a land bridge oo. Soon maps of preoricseas    solid o Europe, fromBrazil to Africa, from Sout Asia to Australia, from Australia to Antarctica. tive tendrils    only vely appeared o move aliving anism from one landmass to anot t leaving atrace of tenone of ted by so mucual evide it ury.

        Even land bridges couldn’t explain some trilobite t o    only on one side. Noone could persuasively explain    o cross tileo but to find its rilobite found in Europe and t but noe as 1964    ical difficulties.”

        to be sure, egener made mistakes. ed t Greenland is drifting    by about amile a year, o believe in o accept t massive tis some, like a plo motored ts.

        It    ermied a possible ist to uand tradioactive ion currents o slide tis around on tial textbook Principles of P publisa tial drift t s fuals t prevails today. It ill a radical proposition for time and icized, particularly iates,o drift lasted loed,    anyevident sense of irony, t ed s so clearly and pellingly tstudents migually e to believe them.

        Elseious support. In 1950, a vote at ting of tision for t of Sce s about al drift. (er citedtragically misled Britiss imes ial drift; in mygeological bones, so to speak, I feel tastie.”

        tial drift    entirely    support iates. Reginald Daly of, but ed t t, and eo be sidered iing, even a toucoo exuberant for serious sideration. And so most Ameri academicsstuck to t tis    positions forever and ttures could be attributed to someteral motions.

        Iingly, oil pany geologists    if you ed to find oil youo allo of surfaents t e teics.

        But oil geologists didn’t e academic papers; t found oil.

        t no one o resolving. t ion of . Every yearEarterial—500 million tons of calcium, forinstao tiplied te of deposition by t    produced a disturbing figure: t ts on ttoms—or, put anottoms sops. Stists dealt    possible way.

        t. But eventually t w no longer.

        In ton Uy mineralogist named in ctack transport ser, ate ins    it could equally ificpurposes and never sc off, even    sea, even in t of battle. irely ued. If t, as everyone assumed, ted s, like ttom of a river or lake. But t t silts. It ed s t s after an earlier Prion geologist named ArnoldGuyot. All t o take part in, and put sucs to theback of his mind.

        After turo Prion and tions of teac teries of tio occupy a spa s. Meaned surveys of tiest and mostextensive mountain range oly—underer. It traced a tinuous patitc Id, youcould follo doer of tlantic O, around ttom of Africa, and acrosstralia; t angled across ting up t coast of ted States to Alaska.

        Occasionally its er as an island or artice—but mostly it y sea, unknoed. s braeo 46,600 miles.

        A very little of time. People laying o-floor cables iury    tainous intrusion in tlanti t tinuous nature and overall scale of tunning surprise. Moreover, it tained p couldn’t be explained.

        Dolantic ridge —up to a dozen miles s entire 12,000-mile lengto suggest t tting apart att bursting out of its s ion, but t be denied.

        t te young at tlanticridge but gre to t or . ter and realized t t ral rift, t as necame aloic floor ively ts, one carryingcrust to tohe process becameknown as seafloor spreading.

        reacs jour tis, it plungedbato tion. t explained . It uro t also explained o be older t175 million years, al rocks en billions of yearsold. No took to travel tos iful t explained a great deal. ed ant paper, imes t isn’t readyfood idea.

        Meanartling findingsby dra of Eartory t had been discovered several decades earlier.

        In 1906, a Frenamed Bernard Brun t’s magic fieldreverses itself from time to time, and t tly fixed iain rocks at time of tiny grains of iroo    time of tion, taypointing in t dire as t tic poles    time of tion. For years ttle more ty, but in trick Blackett of ty of London and S. K. Run ofty of udied t magic patterns frozen in Britisartled, to say t, to find ting t at some time in tant pastBritain s axis and traveled some distao t s ms. Moreover, t if you placed a map ofEurope’s magic patterns alongside an Ameri one from t togetly as tter. It was uny.

        too.

        It finally fell to ty, a geop named DrummondMatte student of o drarands togetic studies of tlantic O floor, trated clusively tted and t tis ion too. An unlucky adian geologist named La time, but couldn’t find ao publish his paper.

        In oldions make iing talk at cocktail parties, but it is not t of t ougo be publisific aegis.” One geologist later described it as“probably t signifit paper in to be denied publication.”

        At all events, mobile crust ant figures in ty in 1964, and suddenly, it seemed, everyoing agreed, erected segments ely jostlingsated for muc’s surface behavior.

        tial drift” ly discarded    t ion and not just tis, but it took a tle on a namefor ts. At first people called tal blocks” or sometimes “pavingstones.” Not until late 1968, ion of an article by ts in ts receive tes. ticle called teteics.

        Old ideas die    everyone ruso embrace ti popular and iial geological textbooks, trenuously insisted t plate teics    as it    edition    ion and seafloor spreading. And in Basin and Range, publised t even t in eigill didn’t believe in plate teics.

        today    Eart to tes (depending ony or so smaller ones, and t diresand at different speeds. Some plates are large and paratively inactive, oteic. tal relationso t sit upon te, for instance, is mut    isassociated. It rougraces tline of ti’s ern coast (ive, because of te boundary), butigern seaboard altogetead extends lantic to t do teically    of te event is no plates.

        tio o beinfinitely more plex tan, it turns out, taoraten Island, but only a er, isEuropean. So is part of Nes beaearest kin tisantially Ameri. Some of te of Antarctica, it is t, may oern U.S. Rocks, in s, get around.

        tant turmoil keeps tes from fusing into a single immobile plate. Assumingtinue muc present, tlantic O il eventually it is muc off and bee a kind of Madagascar ofto Europe, squeezing terranean out ofexistend ting up a s of y running from Paris toCalcutta. Australia o its nort by some isto Asia. ture outes, but not future events. ts are    is are adrift, like leaves on a pond. to Global PositioningSystems    Europe and N at about to    long enougo San Francisco. It is only ty oflifetimes t keeps us from appreciating t a globe and is as t oof tory.

        Earts ionics, and ery. It is not simply a matter of size or density—Venus is nearly a ts a eic activity. It is t—t is really not—t teics is an important part of t’s anid er James trefil    it, “It    tinuousmovement of teic plates    on t of life ost teics—ce, for insta spur to t of intelligeings of tis may    least some of tin events. InNovember of 2002, tony Di of Cambridge Uy in England produced a report,publisrongly suggesting t tionsory of rocks and tory of life.    Di establis tion of tered abruptly and vigorously tt    ten correlate as inbiological ory—tburst of tiny anisms t created t, t causes try to cically from time to time, but tting of o ridges .

        At all events, plate teiot only explai    from Frao Florida, for example—but also many of its internalas. Eartion of island s ofmountains, tself—tter t directly influenced by ts, as McPed,found tion t “th suddenly made sense.”

        But only up to a point. tribution of tis in former times is muclyresolved t people outside geopextbooks give fident-looking representations of a landmasses imes based on clusions t don’t altogetory of Life, species of plants andanimals from t ly o be w.

        tline of Gond eg Australia, Afritarctica, and Sout on tribution of a genus ofaongue fern called Glossopteris, eris s of t ion to Gondroubling discrepanues to be—mostlyignored. Similarly a triassic reptile called Lystrosaurus arctica allto Asia, supp tiois, but iturned up in Soutralia, i at time.

        tures t teics ’t explain. take Denver. It is, aseveryone kno rise is paratively ret.    of an o bottom, many t lo ts are not fractured or deformed in tes, and anyoo far from te edges to besusceptible to tions. It oraise a ruck at te end. Mysteriously and over millions of years, it appears tDenver oo, ion ofit a t any keic activity. Australia, meaning and sinking. Over t100 million years as it ed nortos leading edge . It appears t Indonesia is very sloralia do. onics    explain any of this.

        Alfred egener never lived to see ed. On an expedition to Greenland in1930,    out alone, oo c a supply drop. urned.

        er, frozen to deat and liest, but about a yard closer to Northe day he died.

        Einstein also failed to live long enougo see t , Prion, Nealdrift theories was even published.

        teics tPrion at time, and    of udents    way.

        As feology itself, its cataclysms    begun, and it art the process.

        PARt IV    DANGEROUS PLAory of any one part of tsof long periods of boredom ands periods of terror.

        -Britis Derek V. Ager
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