Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/42

18 already prevails among the various specialists upon the most important of the land-bridges, although individuals cannot always “see the wood for the trees.” We refer in this connection to the summary given in of the views of twenty specialists on the several bridges, whether favourable or hostile. It is regarded as certain that there was a land connection, sometimes broken, between North America and Europe, which finally broke in the Glacial Period; a similar one between Africa and South America, which vanished in the Cretaceous Period; a third, the “Lemurian” bridge between Madagascar and India, which broke down at the beginning of the Tertiary; and finally a “Gondwana” bridge from Africa through Madagascar and India to Australia, which split up in the earliest Jurassic. Formerly also a land connection must have prevailed between South America and Australia, but the view that this was formed by a bridging-continent in the Southern Pacific is advocated by only a few workers. Most of them assume that this connection lay via Antarctica, since this lies on the shortest