ANCIENT PACIFIC LAND BELT 
419 
western North America became disconnected. Yet the eastern 
shores of the great peninsula, which long afterwards stretched 
southward from the west coast of California, joined the con¬ 
tinent of South America further north, probably in Ecuador 
and Peru (Pig. 16). Animals and plants arriving from the 
north, like the mastodon above alluded to, no longer reached 
Chile directly, though still able to enter South America by 
this second route, which added many new forms to the fauna 
of the continent. 
This is all I have to say on the origin of the faunistic and 
floristie relationships between southern South America and 
North America as well as Europe. I have also referred 
above to a kinship existing between the Santa Cruz fauna of 
Argentina and the living fauna of Australia. This is a pro¬ 
blem of even greater interest than that just discussed. At 
any rate, the testimony in its favour has converted many of 
those who had hitherto looked upon great changes in the 
disposition of continents and ocean basins during the Tertiary 
Era as altogether visionary speculations. Some, like Professor 
Osborn,* who contends that the Atlantis hypothesis is highly 
improbable, regard the hypothetical reconstruction of a great 
southern continent (Fig. 21) uniting South America with 
Australia as one of the greatest triumphs of recent biological 
investigation. The theory of the former land connection be¬ 
tween southern South America and New Zealand or Australia 
has been discussed from almost every point of view, so that we 
possess at present quite an extensive literature on the subject. 
A few years ago Dr. Ortmann summarised the more important 
papers dealing with this subject, but many other essays have 
since been published throwing further light on this fascina¬ 
ting problem. The great majority of those who have endea¬ 
voured to account for the undoubted faunistic or floristie affi¬ 
nities of southern South America and the Australian region 
have come to the conclusion that it is due to the existence of a 
former antarctic continent. A few, however, argue that there 
was a more direct land connection between the two areas 
across the southern Pacific, while some believe that the resem¬ 
blance in the fauna and flora of the countries referred to has 
* Osborn, H. F., “ Age of Mammals,” p. 75. 
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