Fossil Distribution

Fossils help to provide further evidence that the continents were once joined together as a super continent. Geologists have found fossils of different plants and animals, on different continents that a separated by oceans. This fossilised evidence suggests that these animals evolved together and were then separated when the continents split apart.

Most of the animals that were alive in this time period have been extinct for thousands of years, so fossils are the only evidence available to provide further proof for the theory of continental drift. The distribution of these fossils shows a similar, unbroken pattern of that which the matching geological formations forms.

When Wagner suggested his theory, many were skeptical, instead scientists suggested that seeds of plants were carried by the wind and other animals migrated continents via land bridges, during an ice age. An ice age would lower the sea level allowing animals to cross Bering Strait between Asia and North America. However, if land bridges did exist, their remnants should still lie below sea level, but no signs of land bridges have ever been found in the Atlantic Ocean. Also the seeds of the Glossopteris, one of the fossils used as proof in this piece of evidence, had seeds that were too large and heavy to be carried by the wind even small distances, let alone across vast oceans.