4 AFRICA AND ITS FAUNA 



central or southern. This event is, perhaps, the most important of those connected 

 with the life-history of the world which ever took place, for it was the commence- 

 ment of the chain of evolution which culminated, under Divine guidance, in the 

 evolution of man himself. 



For many years little or nothing was known with regard to the past history 

 of mammalian life in Africa, and it became an axiom among naturalists that for 

 countless ages preceding the modern period the whole of this continent lying to 

 the southward of the Sahara was devoid of mammals, and that it received the 

 ancestors of its existing fauna from the countries to the north. 



Although this appears to have been really the case with regard to a consider- 

 able portion of the mammalian fauna, it does not hold good for the groups now 

 represented by the elephants and the hyraxes, of which the ancestral types have 

 been discovered in the lower Tertiary or Eocene formations of the Fayum district 

 of Egypt — formations which are incalculably later in time than those containing the 

 remains of the aforesaid mammal-like reptiles. It is, moreover, highly probable 

 that the man-like apes are also an African product, seeing that their earliest 

 known representative flourished at the same time and in the same area as the 

 ancient Egyptian forerunners of the elephants. 



Another feature of special interest in respect to the past history and evolution 

 of Africa is the geological and palseontological evidence pointing to the existence 

 of a former land connection between that continent and South America on the 

 one hand and Australia on the other ; these connections being the last remnants 

 of the earlier and much more extensive land-area which has been named (from 

 the Gond tribes of India) Gondwanaland. This great land-area appears to have 

 been gradually broken at various epochs, and its remnants are now respectively 

 represented by Australia, India, Africa, and Brazil. The separation of Brazil 

 seems to have been the final stage in the dismemberment of this ancient continent ; 

 but the geological epoch in which the severance occurred cannot yet be definitely 

 fixed. Some naturalists believe that it took place at the close of the Mesozoic, or 

 Secondary, epoch, which immediately preceded the Tertiary, but others, especially 

 Americans, believe that it persisted into the latter epoch. 



At one time it was considered that the occurrence of an extinct genus of 

 insectivorous mammals (Necrolestes) in the middle Tertiary Santa Cruz formation 

 of Patagonia, closely related to the golden moles (Chrysochloris) of southern and 

 eastern Africa, implied a very late connection between South America and Africa, 

 but the subsequent discovery in North America of extinct genera allied to the 

 golden moles rendered this evidence of little or no importance. On the other 

 hand, the belief that certain extinct flesh-eating mammals from the Santa Cruz 

 beds, typified by the genus Prothylacynus, are true marsupials, near akin to the 

 modern Tasmanian wolf (Thylacynus), is of great importance as indicating a late 

 land communication between South America and Australia. Further evidence 

 in the same direction is afforded by the occurrence in the late Tertiary deposits of 

 Patagonia and Queensland — and nowhere else in the world — of gigantic horned 

 land tortoises (Miolania) of an altogether peculiar and isolated type. 



Turning to another point, it is mentioned in the next chapter that the fauna 

 of Africa is of an entirely different type from that of the central and southern 



DS1 



