What is the difference between continental drift and plate tectonics?
Continental drift is the name of the theory of the earth from around 1925 by Alfred Wegener who suggested it based on the fit of the continental coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, later based on evidence of fossil correlations between southern Africa and South America, but not adopted overall as a theory of geology. Plate tectonics is the modern term used from the 1960’s on after geophysicists learned the mechanism of sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges and of earthquakes in the ocean trenches and were able to learn the facts about the division of the globe into lithospheric plates created and destroyed by the convecting asthenosphere, and were able to adapt this model as a framework within which geologic processes operate.
