Eduard Suess

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Eduard Suess

1831-1914

Austrian professor of geology at the University of Vienna who laid the foundation for the field of structural geology. Suess suggested that moving landmasses cause earthquakes and that sea level had changed through time. He recognized similarities between fossils from South America, Africa, Australia, and India and proposed that these areas were once connected as a large super-continent he named Gondwana. Later geologists recognized that Gondwana included Antarctica.