200 
SOUTH AMERICAN GEOLOGY 
and sandstones passing upward into coal measures containing the 
Glossopteris flora. It is followed by over a thousand feet of 
shales containing reptilian remains and fossil woods. The section 
shows many general similarities to that of South Africa, especially 
in the plants and Mesosaurus, and its relations to the Triassic, and 
it has generally been interpreted as indicating that South America 
was a part of so-called Gondwana Land extending from South 
America to India and Australia. In the state of Santa Catharina, 
Brazil, which furnishes the most complete known section, the fol¬ 
lowing succession has been described: 
^ FEET 
SANTA 
CATHARINA 
SYSTEM 
Sao Bento Series 
Triassic 
Serra Geral eruptives.1950 
Sao Bento sandstones.650 
Rio do Rasto red beds, with 
Scaphonyx (dinosaur) and 
w’ood . 335 
Probable break 
Passa Dois Series 
Permian 
Rocinha limestone. 
Estrada Nova shales. 
Iraty black shale, with Me¬ 
sosaurus petroliferus . 
10 
500 
230 
Tubarao Series 
Permian 
Palermo shale.290 
Rio Bonito coal measures, of 
shales, coals and sandstones, 
^ with the Glossopteris flora..515 
Orleans glacial till.17 
Yellow sandstones and 
shales. 88 
Granite 
Farther southwest the Late Triassic basaltic outflows are re¬ 
placed by continental beds containing representatives of the cos¬ 
mopolitan Rhsetic flora (Chile and western Argentina). No ma¬ 
rine Triassic beds have been discovered in South America, except 
certain poorly known localities in the Andean region of Central 
and Northern Peru. The few fossils suggest a Norian, or Late 
Triassic age, are cosmopolitan types, and apparently are the pre¬ 
cursors of the considerable Liassic transgression which follows 
after a break representing the Rhaetic stage of the universal time 
scale. 
The older Paleozoic sediments appear to have been folded after 
the Early Devonic transgression, and there is a second period of 
