270 PROFESSOR EDUARD SUESS 



When, however, one follows the coast from the mouth of the Ganges 

 westward, and again to Cape Horn, totally different conditions are 

 met. Disregarding the bending of the mountains at Gibraltar and 

 vicinity, which the American Cordilleras in the Antilles also show — 

 at both places, as you know, folded mountain chains do approach 

 the Atlantic area, but they bend backward as if held back by some 

 secret force — one sees encircling the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans 

 only similar amorphous coast lines, namely, such as are in no wise 

 predicated by the structure of the lands. Therefore we have distin- 

 guished a Pacific and an Atlantic type of coast. 



We can go still farther. In whatever direction one proceeds from 

 the land to the Pacific, an unfolding sequence of marine series is 

 seen. If one goes from the wide Archean areas of South America, 

 on which lie horizontal Paleozoic sediments, toward the west, in the 

 Andes are found marine beds of the Jura, the Lower Cretaceous, also 

 the Middle and Upper Cretaceous. It is the same if one goes from 

 the old Laurentian Mass in Canada westward toward the sea. This 

 is also the case in Japan, etc. From the foregoing we may conclude 

 that the Pacific is of very ancient origin, and that it has existed for 

 an extraordinarily long time. 



With the other oceans it is different. When one nears the Indian 

 Ocean, horizontally disposed marine beds are met with, not folded 

 strata as in the Pacific area. These, however, do not begin with the 

 Trias, but in east Africa as in western Australia start with the Middle 

 Jura, and in Madagascar with the Middle Lias. Similarly, on the 

 shores of the Atlantic Ocean horizontal non-folded strata are found, 

 and these, in west Africa as in North America and Brazil, begin with 

 the Middle and Upper Cretaceous. From this we conclude that the 

 Pacific Ocean is older, the Indian Ocean younger, and the Atlantic 

 Ocean essentially still younger. 



I have mentioned yet another ocean, Tethys, which in Mesozoic 

 times lay across present Asia, and whose remnants constitute our 

 Mediterranean. The entire area of Tethys is laid in folds, and from 

 the Pacific Ocean to the Caucasus throughout these folds are also 

 moving southward; their margins in the south are overthrusted ; the 

 entire province of the sea is crushed from the north, and even rem- 

 nants of the old southern foreland — the Gondwana Land, or the 



