MAJOR EARTH FEATURES 
183 
Atlantic, according to Wegener, corresponds to an almost uni¬ 
versal crowding of the continents toward the Pacific Ocean. 
On the coasts of the former pulling and splitting off are the rule, 
on the coasts of the other, pushing together. 
Wegener’s explanation of the major forms of the earth’s sur¬ 
face demand all the more consideration since it destroys the 
fixed basis of our former method of paleogeographic recon¬ 
struction of continents and seas. Dacque,^® one of the represen¬ 
tatives of modern paleogeography, has agreed with Wegener, as 
has also Klocking,^^ who welcomes his theory as a worthy sup¬ 
port of Simroth’s law of biological development. Andree has 
expressed doubts of the formation of the Atlantic Ocean by the 
splitting off of North America from Europe, without, however, 
weakening Wegener’s hypothesis by the presentation of proofs. 
If we test Wegener’s idea of the separation and recombination 
of the continental masses in the light of the events in the earth’s 
history, we arrive everywhere at striking contradictions with 
established results of paleogeographic research. 
Let us begin with the three continents of the southern hemis¬ 
phere. According to Wegener, they were all long ago united 
with the African block, which later was left alone in its original 
place. South America was connected with Africa on a broad 
front and its splitting off in Eocene or Oligocene times was the 
cause of the origin of the South Atlantic.^® The southern point 
of anterior India lay near that of South Africa. In Triassic or 
Jurassic time, the Indian peninsula was split off from the African 
mass, wandered northward, and finally during the later Tertic 
period was united with Eurasia. The Australian continental mass 
was still united with the Indo-African block in Permian time, 
and Wegener points to the probability of a direct connection of 
the west coast of Australia with the east coast of anterior India, 
while the other side was connected along its whole southern coast 
with the Antarctic mass. The latter was shoved later toward the 
» 
10 Grundlagen und Methoden der Palaeogeographie, p, 182, Jena, 1915. 
11 Simrotha Entwicklungsgesetze im Eichte der Wegenerschen Hypothese, etc.: Pe- 
termanns Geog. Mitt., I Bd., p. 121, 1913. 
12 In his book: “Ueber die Bedingungen der Gebirgsbildung,” Borntrager, Berlin, 
1914, Andree objects only to the association of the shifting of the continental masses 
with the erection of folded mountains on their edges. 
[13 If this splitting off is admitted, it must have begun at least as early as Early 
Cretacic time, since marine strata of this age are present in northeastern Brazil.] 
