300 
Australian flora do not confirm this impres- 
sion, however. Rather, they support the sup- 
position that, in most of its essentials, the 
development of flowering plants goes back 
to even earlier times — to the period of Low- 
er Cretaceous formations, possibly even as 
far back as the Jurassic period. Unfortunate- 
ly there are not many fossil evidences of 
angiosperms preserved from Jurassic times, 
and very few of these can be identified with 
certainty. When the Cenozoic era began, 
the chief development of the angiosperms 
must already have been finished. Particularly 
primitive types might have been preserved 
until then, of course, but there is no definite 
fossil evidence as yet of this possibility." 
COMPARISON OF AUSTRALIA WITH 
NEW ZEALAND 
In this connection it might be significant 
to draw a parallel by investigating a land 
area near Australia and which has been 
isolated from other continents for even a 
longer time than Australia. Such a territory 
is New Zealand. No fossil mammals were 
found there, while, as we know, primitive 
mammals had entered Australia from south- 
ern Asia. In the event that some of these 
mammals originated in Australia itself — a 
rather untenable supposition — they must 
have wandered out of Australia over land 
bridges toward the north, eventually to reach 
Europe and North America. In New Zea- 
land, on the other hand, only a small rat 
has been found to represent the mammals, 
and this rat was probably imported by man 
2 Erdtman in 1948 published reports in Grana 
Palynologica, that pollen had been found in the 
black lias formations of southern Sweden. The 
pollen appears similar to that of Eucommia 
species ( Eucommia is a genus in China, closely 
related to the Ulmaceae) and it is not likely to 
have been derived from Gymnospermae. Inas- 
much as the black lias of Sweden is a Lower 
Jurassic formation, these pollen finds may offer 
some evidence of the early development of the 
angiosperms. 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. IV, October, 1950 
in very recent times. The islands of New 
Zealand have never been connected with 
land areas inhabited by mammals, and until 
now no fossil relics of mammals have been 
found there; it is very unlikely, therefore, 
that mammals did live in New Zealand at 
one time but have died out there since. 
Now, if New Zealand has never been 
connected with land areas populated by 
mammals, where did its flora come from? 
And does this flora show still more primitive 
features than does that of Australia? 
Diels (1897) has entered into a full dis- 
cussion of these questions in his work on 
the Vegetationsbiologie von Neuseeland. He 
assumes that New Zealand has not been 
submerged since the middle of the Mesozoic 
era. According to Hutton (cited by piels, 
1897), New Zealand was connected with 
an Antarctic continent which existed during 
the Lower Cretaceous period, toward the end 
of the Mesozoic era. Diels thinks it is prob- 
able that, even during the later Triassic 
period in early Mesozoic time, the Austral 
circumpolar lands were closely related to 
each other, so that there was a genetical con- 
nection among the mountain floras of Tas- 
mania, southern Australia, the southernmost 
part of South America, and an Antarctic 
continent which probably was more tem- 
perate in its climate in those early times 
than it is now. This interrelationship of 
floras would find its parallel in the Arctic, 
Alpine, and Altaic floras of the northern 
hemisphere. 
In his paper, Diels cites evidence to sup- 
port this supposition of the connection of the 
Antarctic and Austral land masses. In those 
times the Antarctic continent must have been 
much larger than it is today, free from ice 
in its northern parts, and certainly warmer 
during the Triassic period. In addition to 
Diel’s evidence, we can find further testimony 
in comparative zoology and in plant geo- 
graphy. Fossil relics of marsupial groups 
now limited to Australia — species of the 
