...fragmented, and the parts began to move away from one another. Westward drift of the Americas opened the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian block drifted across the Equator to merge with Asia. In 1937 Alexander L. Du Toit, a South African geologist, modified Wegener’s hypothesis by suggesting two primordial continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south.

...remains today a serious candidate for the force driving the plates. Wegener’s ideas also were well received by geologists in the Southern Hemisphere. One of them, the South African Alexander Du Toit, remained an ardent believer. After Wegener’s death, Du Toit continued to amass further evidence in support of continental drift.

ancient continental mass in the Northern Hemisphere that included North America, Europe, and Asia (except peninsular India). Its existence was proposed by Alexander Du Toit, a South African geologist, in Our Wandering Continents (1937). This book was a reformulation of the continental drift theory advanced by the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener. Whereas Wegener had postulated a...

...fragmented and the parts began to drift apart. Westward drift of the Americas opened the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian block drifted across the Equator to join with Asia. In 1937 the South African Alexander Du Toit modified Wegener’s hypothesis by suggesting the existence of two primordial continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwanaland in the south. Aside from the congruency of continental...