Author: Du Toit, Alexander Logie [1878-1948]
Title: A Geological Comparison of South America with South Africa
Description: Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1927. orig. wrappers. 25x17cm, 157,(16) pp. Corner bumped. Removed bookplate mark to flyleaf.. Library rubberstamps to title & half-title verso.. 16 photoplates,folding map.. Worn. A large removed label mark to cover. Fair condition. ¶ with a palaeontological contribution by F.R. Cowper Reed". With a large folding map in rear pocket [Geological map of part of South Africa, 1:5 000000]. ["...an early supporter of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift.... In 1923, he received a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and used this to travel to eastern South America to study the geology of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. As is apparent from his remarks in 'Our Wandering Continents', he had requested support for the expedition not on a whim but specifically to test his predictions of correspondences between the geology of both continents. In the event, he was able to demonstrate and follow the predicted continuation of specific features that had already documented in Southern Africa into the continent of South America. Although it might perhaps seem less impressive to the layman, that evidence was far more convincing to the geologist than was the matching of continental shelves. In the light of his research, du Toit published a review of the stratigraphic and radioisotope evidence from those regions that supported Wegener's ideas, A Geological Comparison of South America with South Africa (1927). His best-known publication, Our Wandering Continents (1937), expanded and improved this work and, departing somewhat from Wegener, proposed two original supercontinents separated by the Tethys Ocean, a northern/equatorial Laurasia and a southern/polar Gondwanaland" - wikipedia].

Keywords: Geology, Plate Tectonics, Continental Drift, History of Science, , , , ,