Wandering Continents and Spreading Sea Floors on an Expanding Earth

Abstract

The conference on the Implications of Continent al Drift to the Earth Sciences at Newcastle in 1972 was drawing to a close. For a week, participants had discussed new hypotheses on continent al drift, rift valleys, sea-floor spreading, plate tectonics, reversals of geomagnetic polarity and related topics, and now they were listening to the final paper, by Dr R. S. Dietz, on Continents adrift: new orthodoxy or persuasive joker. Ably illustrated by J. C. Holden, the paper was a glorious spoof, and like all good spoofs it left the hearers uncertain as to how much was good clean fun and how much was underlying doubt upon those matters which the Conference had debated. Dietz himself had been a major contributor in fields of the New Tectonics; on maturer thought, and with further data, how much of the bright new hypotheses had he come to doubt?