28 FORMATION OF THE EARTH 



Mozambique, the two halves becoming the Afro-Brazilian and 

 the Australo-Indo-Madagascan continents. 1 Between these 

 two continents and the two northern ones the transversal 

 sea, already alluded to as the Central Mediterranean or Tethys, 

 grew larger. It occupied the exact site of the future Alpine 

 folds. It is probable that the hypothetical Pacific continent 

 still existed, and that the Tethys extended from the western 

 to the eastern site of the present Atlantic, being prolonged 

 towards the seas bordering it on the eastern coast. 



We now come to the Cretaceous period. 2 At its commence- 

 ment the northern part of the North Atlantic continent 

 (King Charles Land, Spitzbergen, east Greenland) was 

 invaded by the ocean ; an arm of the sea separated the Sino- 

 Siberian continent from the Scandinavian barrier ; in the Afro- 

 Brazilian continent the sea reached and submerged southern 

 Abyssinia, the Somali coast, and the southern part of Cape 

 Colony. Almost all the Australo-Indo-Madagascan continent, 

 except the Kateh district and western Australia, was left intact. 

 The arm of the sea which had united the Caribbean Sea to 

 the Tethys in Triassic and Jurassic times still existed. This 

 epoch might be called the Eocretaceous, and the following 

 epochs the Mesocretaceous and Neocretaceous. 



During the Mesocretaceous period the sea abandoned the 

 Arctic regions just enumerated. The sea arm which had 

 divided the Scandinavian barrier from the Sino-Siberian 

 continent and the sea to the north of Siberia, and part of the 

 ocean encircling the Pacific continent, dried up ; but the 

 waters invaded the western coast of the Canadian barrier, 

 certain parts of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Bohemia, and 

 Spanish and Moroccan Meseta, thus forming a communication 

 between the Tethys and the Gulf of Guinea. The ocean entirely 

 covered Syria, Arabia, the Sahara, the Sudan, the Africa 

 coasts from the equator to the Cape, the north-east of Brazil, 

 the north and south-east of the Indian peninsula, the plateau 

 of Assam, Queensland, and the west coast of Madagascar. 

 The Tethys continued to spread to the south of the North 

 Atlantic and the Sino-Siberian continents, establishing a 

 common marine fauna for the Asiatic and the present 

 Mediterranean regions. One of its arms, passing between the 



i Map III. 2 VI, 135S, 1359. 



