192 
MAJOR EARTH FEATURES 
toward Trinidad? Would it not be remarkable if the North and 
South American continental blocks, which at different times are 
said to have been cut off from those of the Old World, should, af¬ 
ter long wandering westward, finally come into contact with each 
other in a quite restricted zone? 
Wegener’s hypothesis, alluring as it may seem at first sight, 
because it appears to bring us nearer the solution of several 
different problems under a single viewpoint, is nevertheless only 
a juggling with mere possibilities. There is lacking in it the 
foundation of positive evidence, and a series of proved paleogeo- 
graphic results cannot be brought into harmony with it. But it 
is understandable as a reaction against a direction which paleo- 
geography in Europe took in contrast to that in America, and 
which went too far in the reconstruction of the former continents. 
If we wish properly to judge the permanency question, it will 
above all be necessary to establish some sort of clarity concern¬ 
ing it, as to how far we may explain determined facts in the 
realm of paleogeography by the acceptance of bridges over what 
are now sea-basins. As the best example for this purpose, let us 
take that period which Dacque very recently called the most 
geocratic epoch of the earth’s history {l.c., p. 160), that is, that 
period in which the land exceeded the sea in extent as at no other 
time. I can not, of course, give here in detail the proof of my 
results, which are given elsewhere.^^ 
The distribution of sea and land in this Triassic Period teaches 
us that the present continents existed almost as such, that only 
on their edges were they periodically flooded by transgressive 
seas, and that in both hemispheres the continents were separated 
by a mediterranean sea, which in no way can be compared with 
the ocean, but only with the Mediterranean Sea of to-day. Aside 
from these comparatively narrow labile middle-seas of the lithos¬ 
phere, the continental masses existed in Triassic times almost as 
they are to-day. The world-wide transgressions of the Late 
Jurassic or the Late Cretacic seas found their expression in tem¬ 
porary floodings of the continental masses by shallow waters, 
without thereby altering the existence of the former as continental 
masses. All sediments of the transgressing seas, outside of the 
22 This evidence is presented in a special contribution, “Die marinen Reiche der 
Triasperiode,” in the Denkschriften der k. k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 92 Bd., 
pp. 405-549, 1915. 
I 
