Whose measurements first linked earthquakes to the movement of continents?

German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed that continents had once been joined and later drifted apart. His 1912 idea did not immediately explain what drove the motion, but it brought attention to matching coastlines, fossils, and geological structures. Later earthquake patterns helped show that continents sit on moving plates, not fixed landmasses. This eventually led to the plate tectonics theory of the 1960s. Wegener's insight was one of the most important in the history of Earth science.