In the 19th century, scientists including
Joseph Dalton Hooker noted puzzling geological, botanical, and zoological similarities between widely separated areas. To solve these problems, they proposed land bridges between appropriate land masses.[2][3] In geology, the concept was first proposed by
Jules Marcou in Lettres sur les roches du Jura et leur distribution géographique dans les deux hémisphères ("Letters on the rocks of the
Jura [Mountains] and their geographic distribution in the two hemispheres"), 1857–1860.[3]
The theory of
continental drift provided an alternate explanation that did not require land bridges.[4] However the continental drift theory was not widely accepted until the development of
plate tectonics in the early 1960s, which more completely explained the motion of continents over geological time.[5][6]