Charles Darwin’s discovery of Devonian fossils in the Falkland Islands, 1833, and its controversial consequences

Abstract

In March 1833 Charles Darwin discovered Devonian fossils in the Falkland Islands. He was excited by his find but could have had little premonition of the long-running geological controversy that he was initiating. Darwin’s fossils matched a coeval South African fauna and, as further collections were made, the association was apparently strengthened. A particularly important contribution arose around 1910 through collaborations between a local collector, Constance Allardyce, and professional palaeontologists: Ernest Schwarz in South Africa and John Clarke in the USA. The accumulating evidence was seized upon by the early proponents of ‘displacement theory’ – continental drift – notably Alexander Du Toit, who relocated the Falkland Islands northward for his 1927 South Atlantic reconstruction. A more radical, but geologically sounder proposal arose in 1952 when Ray Adie suggested that the Falkland Islands, rotated through 180°, had originated as the eastward culmination of the Cape Fold Belt and Karoo Basin. In effect, Adie had pre-sciently described a rotated microplate, perhaps the first on record. An opposing view saw the Falkland Islands as part of a fixed, South American promontory, and argument around these two contrasting interpretations of South Atlantic geology continues to the present day.