Research History
At the start of the 20th century, American paleontologist Charles Walcott noticed differences in early Paleozoic benthic trilobites of Laurentia (such as Olenellidae, the so called "Pacific fauna"), as found in Scotland and western Newfoundland and those of Baltica (such as Paradoxididae, often called the "Atlantic fauna"), as found in the southern parts of the British Isles and eastern Newfoundland. Geologists of the early 20th century presumed that a large trough, a so-called geosyncline, had existed between Scotland and England in the early Paleozoic, keeping both sides separated.
With the development of plate tectonics in the 1960s, geologists like Arthur Holmes and John Tuzo Wilson concluded the Atlantic Ocean must have had a precursor before the time of Pangaea. Wilson also noticed that the Atlantic had opened at roughly the same place where its precursor ocean had closed. This led him to his Wilson cycle hypothesis.
Read more about this topic: Iapetus Ocean
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