Editing Continental drift (section)

=== Early history ===
{{See also|Early modern Netherlandish cartography|l1=Early modern Netherlandish cartography and geography}}
[[File:Abraham Ortelius by Peter Paul Rubens.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.1|[[Abraham Ortelius]] by [[Peter Paul Rubens]], 1633]]

[[Abraham Ortelius]] {{Harv|Ortelius|1596}},<ref name="Romm-1994" /> Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1756),<ref name="Schmeling-2004" /> [[Alexander von Humboldt]] (1801 and 1845),<ref name="Schmeling-2004" /> [[Antonio Snider-Pellegrini]] {{Harv|Snider-Pellegrini|1858}}, and others had noted earlier that the shapes of [[continent]]s on opposite sides of the [[Atlantic Ocean]] (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together.<ref name="Brusatte-2016" /> W. J. Kious described Ortelius's thoughts in this way:<ref name="Kious-2001" />
{{blockquote|Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus ... suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa ... by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents]."}}

In 1889, [[Alfred Russel Wallace]] remarked, "It was formerly a very general belief, even amongst geologists, that the great features of the earth's surface, no less than the smaller ones, were subject to continual mutations, and that during the course of known geological time the continents and great oceans had, again and again, changed places with each other."<ref name="Wallace-1889" /> He quotes [[Charles Lyell]] as saying, "Continents, therefore, although permanent for whole geological epochs, shift their positions entirely in the course of ages."<ref name="Lyell-1872" /> and claims that the first to throw doubt on this was [[James Dwight Dana]] in 1849.

[[File:Antonio Snider-Pellegrini Opening of the Atlantic.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.4|[[Antonio Snider-Pellegrini]]'s Illustration of the closed and opened [[Atlantic Ocean]] (1858)<ref name="Snider-Pellegrini-1858" />]]

In his ''Manual of Geology'' (1863), Dana wrote, "The continents and oceans had their general outline or form defined in earliest time. This has been proved with regard to North America from the position and distribution of the first beds of the [[Lower Silurian]], – those of the [[Potsdam Sandstone|Potsdam epoch]]. The facts indicate that the continent of North America had its surface near tide-level, part above and part below it (p.196); and this will probably be proved to be the condition in Primordial time of the other continents also. And, if the outlines of the continents were marked out, it follows that the outlines of the oceans were no less so".<ref name="Dana-1863" /> Dana was enormously influential in America—his ''Manual of Mineralogy'' is still in print in revised form—and the theory became known as the ''Permanence theory''.<ref name="Oreskes-2002-2" />

This appeared to be confirmed by the exploration of the deep sea beds conducted by the [[Challenger expedition|''Challenger'' expedition]], 1872–1876, which showed that contrary to expectation, land debris brought down by rivers to the ocean is deposited comparatively close to the shore on what is now known as the [[continental shelf]]. This suggested that the oceans were a permanent feature of the Earth's surface, rather than them having "changed places" with the continents.<ref name="Wallace-1889" />

[[Eduard Suess]] had proposed a supercontinent [[Gondwana]] in 1885<ref name="Suess-1885" /> and the [[Tethys Ocean]] in 1893,<ref name="Suess-1893" /> assuming a [[Land bridge#Land bridge theory|land-bridge]] between the present continents submerged in the form of a [[geosyncline]], and [[John Perry (engineer)|John Perry]] had written an 1895 paper proposing that the Earth's interior was fluid, and disagreeing with [[Lord Kelvin]] on the age of the Earth.<ref name="Perry-1895" />