In January of 1912 German geophgysicist Alfred Wegener proposed the idea of continental drift. Mainstream thought he was mistaken. Badly. At https://www.sciencealert.com/matching-dinosaur-footprints-found-3700-miles-apart-reveal-earths-past … Wegener had looked at similar fossils of animals and plants on different land masses. He wondered if, perhaps, the continents had once been together before somehow separating into a new configuraion. Continental drift is now a feature of Plate Tectonics – which is supposed to be the mechanism by which it occurs. Wegener himself, it is said, didn’t have a mechanism as to how it worked. Others came forward to offer the idea the Earth itself is expanding, for example, breaking up Pangea. Plate Tectonics harnessed the idea and is based on the theory Earth’s surface is a series of plates – that move around. Britain, for example, many millions of years ago, was once in the southern hemisphere, and has gradually moved northwards. Evidence of the Arctic and Antarctic being warm locations is used to support the idea. The key point to take is that the continents move at a very slow snail’s pace. It took place over a very long time.
It seems like paleontologists have found another match that can be explained by continental drift – or plate movement. Almost identical sets of dinosaur footprints have been found on the coast of Cameroon in central Africa and in Brazil in South America. A big ocean separates the two land masses – 6000 km apart [roughly 3700 miles]. The dinosaur footprints themselves, are said to date back 140 million years. Over 260 footprints stamped into mud by sauropods and theropods. In terms of age, both sets of footprints were similar, as well as the dinosaurs they belong to. They are almost identical. Back in the Jurassic the elbow of NE Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon in the Gulf of Guinea.
At https://www.sciencealert.com/13600-year-old-mastodon-fossil-discovered-in-iowa-may-offer-clues-to-extinction ….. which brings us much closer to the present – the Younger Dryas boundary event [or roughly so]. It was the first ever well preserved mastodon excavated in Iowa. Mostly its head at the moment as the excavation continues. They hope to find evidence of human interactions with the beast. Projectile points or butchering stone tools, ar even cut marks on bones. Unlike mammoths, mastodons lived in woodland areas – even though they have been found as far north as Alaska.
The same story is at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240826131303.htm ….