FOSSIL LEAF OF GLOSSOPTERIS IN A GLASS MUSEUM DISPLAY BOX - 260 million years old - Australia
« backFOSSILISED LEAF OF GLOSSOPTERIS
260 million year old fossil that provided key evidence for continental drift. Presented in a vintage museum display box with a glass lid
260 million year old fossil that provided key evidence for continental drift. Presented in a vintage museum display box with a glass lid
Dunedoo, New South Wales, Australia
The movement of continents across the Earth’s surface is now an accepted fact but when the theory of continental drift was put forward by Alfred Wegener in 1912 it was widely ridiculed.
One of Wegener’s main pieces of evidence in support of the theory was the fact that fossil leaves of the extinct tree Glossopteris from the Permian period are found in South America, Africa, Australia and India but seeds of this tree could not have travelled over large expanses of water. He therefore concluded that these continents must have been joined together in a ‘supercontinent’ known as Gondwanaland.
Wegener’s ideas were not finally accepted until the discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s.
Size: approx. 14 x 10 x 4.5 centimetres (size of box)
Weight: 600 grams (including box)




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