The Invertebrate Fauna of the Uitenhage Series. 53 



encroachment of the southern development into the northern 

 region." With reference to the same subject, Mr. E. D. Oldham 

 wrote : " This barrier does not seem to have been absolutely 

 continuous throughout the Jurassic period, or there may have been a 

 mode of communication round the north of the Peninsula of India 

 by which some migration took place, and so the presence of a few 

 Cutch species, which are also found on the east coast of India and 

 in South Africa, is accounted for." f 



The belief in this supposed land mass extending through 

 Madagascar and cutting off an equatorial basin from the colder 

 southern ocean, has been thought to receive the strongest support 

 from a comparison of some belemnites of Neocomian age found at 

 localities in the north-west of Madagascar. J Neumayr found that 

 while these belemnites belong to groups which in their distribu- 

 tion are essentially associated with the equatorial and South 

 European development, the single belemnite (B. africanus Tate) 

 then known from the Uitenhage beds is not closely comparable 

 with any of these, but belongs to a group distributed in the northern 

 hemisphere only in the boreal region and in the northern part of the 

 temperate zone. From this he drew the conclusion that these 

 representatives of contrasted groups of belemnites belong to faunas 

 of radically different type, which flourished in separate geographical 

 regions. Much has been made of this piece of evidence, which, so 

 far as it goes, is admittedly very suggestive. The late Dr. W. T. 

 Blanford || more recently drew attention to some independent 

 evidence of another kind which indirectly lends support to the 

 theory of an Indo-African land barrier in pre-Tertiary times, but this 

 only bears on the general question of the existence of a barrier, 

 without any possible reference to its state of completeness during 

 any part of the Cretaceous period. Dr. F. Kossmat 11 has shown 

 that so far as the distribution of the faunas of Ariyalur (Senonian) age 

 was known at the time when he wrote, the evidence was in favour of 

 a barrier separating the waters of the Mediterranean province (with 

 its easterly extension) from the South Indian ocean. He concluded 

 from a careful comparative study of the Cephalopoda that the fauna 

 represented in the Trichinopoly-Pondicherry districts had inter- 

 course with the European area only by way of Natal and to the 

 west. 



The distribution, of the much older Uitenhage fauna must certainly 



* Suess (1), p. 536. f In Medlicott and Blanford (2), p. 211. 



J Newton (1), p. 333. Neumayr (5). 



|| W. T. Blanford (4). H Kossmat (1), Kossmat (2). 



5 



