WOODWORTH: GEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO BRAZIL AND CHILE. 83 
rather than a definitely determined continental tract of such vast 
extent. Some geologist of the distant future viewing the embedded 
traces of the Pleistocene glacial period of northwestern Europe and 
northeastern North America might with almost equal assuredness 
point out the existence of a vast continent embracing these areas and 
the included basin of the existing North Atlantic Ocean. The geo- 
graphical conditions peculiar to Gondwana-land are found in India, 
Australia, and in South America from the Falkland Islands to the 
northern borders of the state of SAo Paulo. Representatives of this 
flora apparently of later date occur as far north as the Mexican state 
of Oaxaca, there with plants of a Triassic facies, Williamsonia, Zamites, 
Otozamites, etc. (Wieland, 1909, p. 441-442). For the purpose of 
designating the larger tracts in which this Permian flora and the 
glacial conditions occur, Gondwana-land has thus lost its original 
limited meaning. The south Brazilian field with its boulder-beds and 
later Triassic trap sheets constitute a well-defined geological province 
to-day for which the name Paran4-land is quite appropriate. It is to 
be presumed that Parand-land was conterminous with land southward 
over Argentina and thence to the continental island group of the 
Falklands. All three of these Gondwana areas lie within that of the 
existing continental block. 
The question of the connection of South America with Africa in 
Permo-Carboniferous times may be stated in other terms in a more 
general form to be that of the origin and history of the Atlantic Ocean 
basin, which Suess has discussed in no uncertain way. The fact that 
there is no recognizable trace of the Atlantic Ocean along its existing 
borders in early Triassic times, except for a narrow sea marginal to 
the Mediterranean tract, and the fact that the Atlantic is a narrow 
and not deep sea are quite consistent with the hypothesis of the origin 
of this depression’ since Lower Triassic times. Certainly the assump- 
tion of an Atlantic trough in Pre-Triassic times having anything like 
the present extent of that basin must be abandoned as being with- 
out sufficient geological evidence. Viewed in the light of Suess’s 
masterful generalization of the geology of the Atlantic shores, we find 
no trace of the South Atlantic Ocean during the Carbonic period 
until the possible marine episode of the Permian epoch in South 
Africa + and in south Brazil if indeed these waters penetrated these 
continents from the Atlantic basin. In Brazil it is more probable 
that the sea invaded the state of Parana from the west. Without 
1 Halle notes the report by Schroeder of marine fossils above the Dwyka con- 
glomerate in German southwest Africa. Op. cit. p. 203. 
