The 15th International Geological Congress, South Africa (1929): The Resurgence of Wegener’s Continental Drift Theory

The 15th International Geological Congress was held in South Africa in 1929. Many interesting issues were tackled, thanks to the development of geophysical techniques, ideas about magmatic differentiation, and the origin of the Karroo System, among others. The importance of the Congress from the point of view of the history of geology lies in the fact that an ‘inflection point’ occurred as regards thinking about the continental drift theory that had been proposed by Wegener a few years earlier. It can be said that the contributions of Du Toit allowed a deepening in the theoretical bases of this scientific hypothesis, which celebrated its first hundred years in 2012.