contexts: Continental drift is the movement of the Earth 's continents relative to each other , thus appearing to `` drift '' across the ocean bed . The speculation that continents might have ' drifted ' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 . The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 , but his theory was rejected by some for lack of a mechanism ( though this was supplied later by Arthur Holmes ) . The idea of continental drift has been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics , which explains how the continents move .
name: Continental drift
answers.input_text: short
answers.span_text: Continental drift
questions.input_text: what process causes the continents to drift apart how