440 GONDWANALAND 



time, for only a very few of the typical Karroo and 

 Gondwana forms have been found in those regions. 

 Some of the products of the denudation of this ancient 

 continent Gondwanaland l accumulated in great fresh- 

 water lakes, of which the Karroo area of South Africa 

 is one. It is useless at the present time attempting to 

 fill in the details of the history of the sediments derived 

 from Gondwanaland ; to discover, for instance, how 

 many fresh-water basins existed, and to what extent 

 they communicated with each other and with the ocean. 

 In Cape Colony all the fossils yet found in these sedi- 

 ments lived upon land or were fresh- water forms, no 

 distinctly marine animals are amongst them. In New 

 South Wales, on the other hand, a striated boulder-bed 

 has been found in strata containing marine fossils of 

 Upper Carboniferous types. The discovery of marine 

 fossils in German South-West Africa is proof, however, 

 of an encroachment of the ocean upon the Karroo Lake 

 in South Africa. 



On the African portion of Gondwanaland at first grew 

 Glossopteris and its associates mentioned on a previous 

 page ; and soon there appeared the remarkable reptiles, 

 of which Pareiasaurus was one of the earlier and larger 

 forms. Pareiasaurus and Dicynodon were certainly vege- 

 table feeders, but carnivorous beasts were by no means 

 wanting, a glance at the formidable teeth in such an 

 animal as Titanosuclim is sufficient to convince any one 

 that their possessors lived upon their fellows and did 

 not graze on the Glossopteris and other plants that 



lr The name given to this hypothetical continent by E. Suess, Das 

 Antlitz der Erde, vol. ii., p. 318, or p. 254 of the English Translation. 



