This Day in History: Geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener presented his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture on this day in 1912. Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, but his hypothesis was rejected by many for lack of any motive mechanism. Hence, the idea was replaced by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains that the continents move by riding on plates of the Earth's lithosphere. However, many still use the term "continental drift" as the term is more explanatory.
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