1 Continents Adrift and Sea-Floors Spreading: The Revolution of Plate Tectonics

• Main Author: Stephen Brusatte
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Georgi; Greenland; Ice cap
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.627.3483; http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/crerar-prize/2003 04 Brusatte.pdf

As the mercury inched below-54 °C, the sense of panic and fear suddenly became palpable. Faced with the uncertainty of a long polar march, a group of 12 native Greenland guides decided they had had enough. If the two European scientists wanted to continue their trek to a remote weather station in the center of Greenland’s barren ice cap, they would have to do it alone. The leader of the team, a German-born earth scientist by the name of Alfred Lothar Wegener, was unfazed by the desertion of his guides. His friend and former student, Johannes Georgi, lay stranded at the station without supplies, and the long Arctic winter was quickly morphing into an agent of death. Wegener elected to proceed, and set out with two companions during the waning days of