The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

28 EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
ocean floor, said, ". . . There is therefore not the slightest
reason to believe that bodily displacements of continents
through the lithosphere are possible" (238:304; 239:346).
The lithosphere, of course, is the crust. The geophysicist
F. A. Vening Meinesz, according to Umbgrove, conclusively
proved the considerable strength of the crust under the
Pacific (430:70).
One of the arguments most frequently heard in favor of
the Wegener theory is based on the apparent correspondence
in shape between certain continents. It would seem, for ex-
ample, that South America might be fitted together with
Africa, and so on. It is claimed that this is evidence that the
two were once parts of one land mass, which must have
broken in two. It is even claimed that rock formations on
opposite sides of the Atlantic match. However, some years
ago, K. E. Caster and J. C. Mendes, two geologists who desired
to prove this theory, spent a vast amount of time in
South America, and travelled about 25,000 miles carrying on
field investigations in order to compare in detail the rock
formations of South America with those of Africa. Their
conclusion was that the rock formations did not prove the
theory. Neither, however, did the evidence they had found
time and more facts can
disprove it. They added, "Only
settle the issue" (69:1173). Professor Walter Bucher, former
President of the Geological Society of America, also answered
this particular point. He published a map showing the
United States as it would look if flooded up to 1,000 feet
above the present sea level. The map shows that the eastern
and western sides of the resulting inland sea correspond
(57 : 459)- Thus, if the sea were there now, it would look as
if the two parts of North America had drifted apart. An alter-
native explanation of such parallel or corresponding features
will be suggested in a later chapter.
Another objection to the Wegener theory is that it assumes
that the sea bottoms are smooth plains. This assumption is
necessary for the theory, for otherwise the continents could
not drift over the ocean basins. As the result of the oceano-