I know the whole idea of continental drift but I’m confused on how we know what past continents look like. I’ve seen so many YouTube videos of Time-lapses of what the continents were like in a span of hundred of millions of years. But they’re always incredibly detailed and it had me wondering how we know all this. I heard people say we can get an estimate what the continents were shaped like based on what directions their moving today. But that method can only take you so far right? Are all those maps of Pangea just guesses?
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Another proof (of Gondwana at least) is the distribution of closely related plants and animals that are found across different continents that were previously connected, eg freshwater fish like cichlids are found in the rivers of South America, Africa and there are even three species in India. These fish did not swim across the oceans. The oceans developed within their previously contiguous habitats. This principle can be evidenced further back in the past to Pangea via the fossil record: previously connected land will have similar fossils from the same era.
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