MAJOR EARTH FEATURES 
193 
above mentioned labile, geosynclinal zones, are neritic, {i.e., are 
shallow-water deposits], but even within the realm of the medi¬ 
terranean itself, neritic deposits predominate far over all others, 
those of bathyal character decrease, and abyssal ones, if present at 
all, are exceedingly rare. 
A glance at the paleogeographic maps of Lapparent, Haug, 
Freeh, Kossmat, and others, show us that the difference in the 
distribution of seas and lands between the Triassic Period and the 
Present time lies not so much in the realms of the continental 
masses of to-day as in the sea-basins. All these maps show a 
united continent in the place of the North Atlantic, which joins 
Laurentia with Fennoscandia, and a still greater south, or equa¬ 
torial, continent, which comprises South America, Africa, anterior 
India, and Australia, and includes also the realms of the southern 
Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the restriction of the Indian 
Ocean, some of the above named paleogeographers go not so 
far in the case of the Atlantic Ocean. Steinmann and Pompeckj 
have objected to the connection between the Californian sea and 
Tethys in the region of the West Indies. 
If we consider the paleogeographic facts which would testify 
such a far-reaching suppression of the Atlantic and Indian 
Oceans, it would almost appear as if the knowledge of the recent 
age of the coasts of this ocean had made it possible to regard 
the formation of the ocean-basin itself as occurring at an equally 
late date. We may, however, always admit, with Suess, that the 
circumference of the Pacific Ocean bears the traces of greater 
geologic age than does the configuration of the Atlantic coast, 
and yet no assistance is thereby offered in the determination of the 
age of the oceanic basins. 
For the region of the North Atlantic, the acceptance of a land- 
bridge is indispensable on zoogeographic grounds; only thus could 
the exchange of land faunas between Europe and North America 
since the Carbonic times have taken place from one side to the 
other, and along their coasts; the marine faunas have migrated 
from one continent to the other ever since Cambric time. The 
close relations existing between the Andean marine faunas and 
those of the Mediterranean realm, during the whole Mesozoic era, 
demand the acceptance of such a land-bridge, which undoubtedly 
may have been at times interrupted, and even broken up into 
