Abstract
WILSON1 postulated, using faunal, tectonic and stratigraphic evidence, that the northern and southern parts of the British Isles were once separated by an ocean (the proto-Atlantic Ocean) which has since been destroyed by a continental drifting process in which the British Isles resulted from the welding together of land masses originally on different sides of the ocean. Following the stimulus of Wilson's idea and the possibility of plate tectonic theory providing an explanation for the continental movements, the geology of the central British Isles has been reappraised2–7 and the igneous, structural and stratigraphic features of the area have been related to the motion of lithospheric plates being thrust under continental masses as the continents converged.
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GUNN, P. Location of the Proto-Atlantic Suture in the British Isles. Nature 242, 111–112 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242111a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/242111a0
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