82 THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES 



different as we approached the modern era. But 

 with this distinctness there appears to have been 

 more of a general correspondence between the 

 faunas of the different parts of the earth's 

 surface, so that the zoogeographical boundaries 

 which we now recognize could at best be only 

 partially drawn. It is only in the Post-Pliocene, 

 or latest Tertiary, period that the approximation 

 between the past and recent faunas has been so 

 far established as to permit us to trace clearly 

 the existing zoogeographical relations, and to 

 state that the modern fauna has been sketched 

 out in place. Thus, in the Australian Post- 

 Pliocene marsupials Diprotodon, Nototherium, 

 Thylacoleo, and their allies, we have the fore- 

 runners of the various marsupial forms that now 

 characterize the continental fauna ; in the giant 

 birds Palapteryx, Dinornis, Mionornis, etc., from 

 New Zealand, Dromaeornis from Australia, and 

 ^Epyornis from Madagascar, the forerunners of 

 the wingless apteryx and the struthious birds from 

 the same or neighboring regions; and in the giant 



