THE CONTINENT 



Of greater importance still were the fossil speci- 

 mens obtained by Scott and Wilson at the head of the 

 Beardmore Glacier under Mount Buckley. Here Scott 

 wrote on February 8th, 191 2, *'The moraine was ob- 

 viously so interesting that when we got out of the 

 wind I decided to camp and spend the rest of the day 

 geologizing. We found ourselves under perpendicular 

 walls of Beacon Sandstone, weathering rapidly and 

 carrying coal seams. From the last Wilson with his 

 sharp eyes has picked several pieces of coal with 

 beautifully traced leaves in layers." These were speci- 

 mens of Glossopteris indica (see Figure 2) which, 

 as Seward remarks, is one of the few genera which 

 can be identified with confidence from fragmentary 

 specimens. Their occurrence only three hundred miles 

 from the Pole throws a light on the remarkable changes 

 of climate which have occurred in the past history 

 of the globe. Seward reconstructs the environment 

 as follows : "The granites and gneisses from which 

 the material of the Beacon Sandstone was derived, 

 were in all probability exposed to the disintegrating 

 action of wind-blown sand in a climate sufficiently 

 mild to permit of the existence of Glossopteris and 

 other plants. Fragments of leaves and twigs with 

 larger logs of wood were carried by rivers or marine 

 currents and buried in the barren sand that was being 

 piled up on the floor of an Antarctic Sea, to be sub- 

 sequently uplifted as vast sheets of sedimentary strata, 

 which at a later stage were penetrated by the products 

 of a widespread volcanic activity." These latter were 

 the enormous dolerite sills already referred to. 



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