The fossil remains of Mesosaurus were significant to Alfred Wegener because they served as key evidence for his theory of continental drift. Mesosaurus was a freshwater reptile that lived during the Permian period and is known from fossil remains found in both South America and Africa. Since Mesosaurus could not have traversed the vast ocean that separates these two continents, its presence in these geographically distant locations suggested that the continents were once joined together.
Wegener used this and other examples of similar fossil distributions to support his claim that the continents had once been part of a supercontinent, which he named Pangaea. The existence of identical fossils on separate continents was one of the pieces of evidence that led him to propose the idea of continental drift, suggesting that continents have moved over geological time. This notion played a crucial role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics, which explains the movement of Earth's lithospheric plates.
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