334 Geographical Distribution of Animals 
where across from the Antilles and Guiana to North Africa and South 
Western Europe, existed an almost identical fauna of Corals and 
Molluscs, indicating either a coast-line or a series of islands interrupted 
by shallow seas, just as one would expect if, and when, a Brazil- 
Ethiopian mass of land were breaking up. Lastly from Central 
America to the Mediterranean stretches one of the Tertiary tectonic 
lines of the geologists. Here also the great question is how long this 
continent lasted. Apparently the South Atlantic began to encroach 
from the south so that by the later Cretaceous epoch the land was 
reduced to a comparatively narrow Brazil-West Africa, remnants of 
which persisted certainly into the early Tertiary, until the South 
Atlantic joined across the equator with the Atlantic portion of the 
“Thetys,” leaving what remained of South America isolated from the 
rest of the world. 
Antarctic connections. Patagonia and Argentina seem to have 
joined Antarctica during the Cretaceous epoch, and this South Georgian 
bridge had broken down again by mid-Tertiary times when South 
America became consolidated. The Antarctic continent, presuming 
that it existed, seems also to have been joined, by way of Tasmania, 
with Australia, also during the Cretaceous epoch, and it is assumed 
that the great Australia-Antarctic-Patagonian land was severed first 
to the south of Tasmania and then at the South Georgian bridge. 
No connection, and this is important, is indicated between Antarctica 
and either Africa or Madagascar. 
So far we have followed what may be called the vicissitudes of 
the great Permo-Carboniferous Gondwana land in its fullest imaginary 
extent, an enormous equatorial and south temperate belt from South 
America to Africa, South India and Australia, which seems to have 
provided the foundation of the present Southern continents, two of 
which temporarily joined Antarctica, of which however we know 
nothing except that it exists now. 
Let us next consider the Arctic and periarctic lands. Unfortunately 
very little is known about the region within the arctic circle. If it 
was all land, or more likely great changing archipelagoes, faunistic 
exchange between North America, Europe and Siberia would present 
no difficulties, but there is one connection which engages much atten- 
tion, namely a land where now lies the North temperate and Northern 
part of the Atlantic ocean. How far south did it ever extend and 
what is the latest date of a direct practicable communication, say 
from North Western Europe to Greenland? Connections, perhaps 
often interrupted, e.g. between Greenland and Labrador, at another 
time between Greenland and Scandinavia, seem to have existed at 
least since the Permo-Carboniferous epoch. If they existed also in 
late Cretaceous and in Tertiary times, they would of course easily 
