Timeline of the development of tectonophysics (before 1954) scheduled for mid 1912. So he hurried up to present his Continental Drift hypothesis. Mainly Charles Lyell, Harold Jeffreys, James D. Dana, Charles Schuchert, Chester Longwell, and the conflict with the Axis powers slowed down the acceptance of continental drifting . Timeline of the development of tectonophysics (before 1954) The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well. The idea of continents
Continental drift was missing. A second problem was that Wegener's estimate of the velocity of continental motion, 250 cm/year, was implausibly high. (The currently accepted rate for the separation of the Americas from Europe and Africa is about 2.5 cm/year). It also did not help that Wegener was not a geologist. Other geologists also believed that the evidence that Wegener had provided was not sufficient. It is now accepted that the plates carrying the continents do move across the Earth's surface, although not as fast as Wegener believed; ironically one of the chief outstanding questions is the one Wegener failed to resolve: