This animated short video celebrates the early 20th-century German astronomer and atmospheric scientist Alfred Wegener, who first proposed that continents once formed a single landmass and had drifted apart.

Alfred Wegener proposed the idea of continental drift to explain why continents' shapes fit together like pieces of a puzzle and why distant continents have the same fossils. During Wegener’s time, the idea was met with hostility. But after his death, a large body of evidence showed that continents do indeed move. This evidence led to the theory of plate tectonics, which is a fundamental principle in modern geology.

This short video tells Wegener’s story using animated paper puppets and narrators.

An audio descriptive version of the film is available via our media player.