76 THE AGE OF MAMMALS 



continent with Madagascar and with some of the Polynesian Islands of the 

 South Pacific. In 1895 Charles Hedley/ an Australian naturalist, proposed 

 the more reasonable view of the extension of the Antarctic continent, sup- 

 posing that in mid-Tertiary time, during the period of milder climate, a 

 continent somewhat larger than that now existing at the Antarctic Pole 

 connected South America with Tasmania and with New Zealand. From this 

 continent he supposed that the marsupials, reptiles, amphibians, and snails, 

 which are common to South America, Australia, and New Zealand, may have 

 migrated. 



The history of this fascinating Antarctica theory is fully narrated by that 

 expert palseogeographer Arnold Edward Ortmann.^ It was discussed by Gill 

 (1875) in its relation to the distribution of the fishes. Evidence in its favor 

 has been drawn by Beddard from a study of worms and other invertebrates : 

 by Moore from a study of the flora of South Africa; by Spencer from a study 

 of the Australian fauna; by Ameghino, Hatcher, and Ortmann from observa- 

 tions on the invertebrate and vertebrate fossils of Patagonia; by Moreno 

 from the discovery in South America of Miolania, an Australian fossil 

 turtle. 



In 1900 Osborn ^ reconstructed this old continent by elevation to the 3040 

 meter sounding line, as shown in the accompanying figure, thus presenting 

 a view intermediate between the extreme of Forbes and the more conserva- 

 tive view of Hedley, who had united South America with Tasmania through 

 a narrow strip of land. Ortmann, in 1901, after reviewing the whole subject,* 

 accepted the first theory of Riitimeyer with the restrictions put upon it by 

 Hedley, expressing the opinion that the fossil shells and mammals of Pata- 

 gonia resemble certain forms of New Zealand and Australia so closely as 

 to be regarded as an additional proof of the former connection of South Amer- 

 ica with Australia and New Zealand, but not with Africa. This author also 

 reconstructed Antarctica. 



Later opinions on the subject are those of W. J. Sinclair (1905) based on 

 his exhaustive studies of the marsupials of Australia and Patagonia," from 

 which he concludes: ^ "The Patagonian marsupials of the Santa Cruz 

 epoch are of peculiar interest from the relationship which they bear to 

 certain Australian and Tasmanian forms. This relationship establishes the 

 reality of former land connection between the Australian region and South 



' Hedley, C, Considerations on the Surviving Refugees in Austral Lands of Ancient 

 Antarctic Life. Proc. Roij. Soc. N.S. Wales, 1893; and, A Zo5geographic Scheme for the Mid- 

 Pacific. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S. Wales, 1899. 



' Ortmann, Reports of the Princeton Expedition to Patagonia, Vol. IV, Palaeontology I, 

 Pt. 1, Marine Cretaceous Invertebrates, 1901, p. 310. 



^ Osborn, Faunal Relations of Europe and America, 1900, p. 52. 



* Ortmann, The Theories of the Origin of the Antarctic Faunas and Floras. Amcr. Nat- 

 ural, Vol. XXXV, no. 410, Feb., 1901, pp. 139-142. 



* Published in the Princeton Patagonian Reports, Vol. IV, Pt. 3, 1906, pp. 330-460. 



* Sinclair, The Marsupial Fauna of the Santa Cruz Beds. Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc, Vol. 

 XLIX, no. 179, 1905. pp. 73 ff. 



