186 
MAJOR EARTH FEATURES 
could have taken place, nor one of India from the north shore 
of Tethys over the Indian Ocean. These considerations force 
us to return to the old premise of the union of anterior India 
with Madagascar by a land-bridge, which later sank beneath the 
surface of the Indian Ocean. We must, then, be willing to accept 
the fact that Madagascar was separated from India in post- 
Cretacic time, and that it wandered back over the same route 
which it formerly took, together with India, only now in the op¬ 
posite direction, toward the Strait of Mozambique, a wandering 
back and forth of continental masses which no longer corresponds 
to a pressure from all sides toward the Indian Ocean. 
A land union must have existed also between the East Indes 
and Australia in Early Mesozoic times, as proved by the occur¬ 
rence of Megalosaurus in the Late Jurassic sandstones near Cape 
Patterson, in Victoria. 
The sediments which to-day are piled up in the Himalayas 
to heights of more than 6,000 m. must, according to Wegener, 
have been laid down in the shelf seas of the continental mass of 
anterior India. This premise is not too far-fetched, since, for 
example, in the marine Triassic beds of the Salt Range remains 
of Gonioglyphus longirostris, one of the Stegocephalia known 
only from the Gondwana formation of India, have been found. 
But since the Indian mass was still connected during Triassic 
times with the African block and Madagascar, this assumption 
is however untenable, in view of the South African faunal ele¬ 
ments in the Late Triassic land fauna of anterior India — and 
since India must have wandered during the Liassic and Jurassic 
periods at least 44 degrees to the north of its original position, 
we should expect to find very clear evidences of diastrophic 
movements in the sediments of the bordering shelf region. Such 
evidences are utterly lacking. 
According to the unanimous testimony of all observers, the 
series, of marine sediments in the Himalaya region shows only 
a single gap, that at the base of the Permian Ruling beds. Over 
against the idea of the uninterrupted series of beds, we might 
place the theory that sedimentation went on undisturbed by the 
relatively slow movement of the Indian continental mass through 
the Indian Ocean, and that the changes in the faunas came about 
gradually. That such an assumption is not sound, will be dem¬ 
onstrated presently. 
