The reader will begin to think that we have sufficiently "explained"
the Permian revolution. Far from it. Some of its problems are as yet
insoluble. We have given no explanation at all why the ice-sheets, which
we would in a general way be prepared to expect, appear in India and
Australia, instead of farther north and south. Professor Chamberlin,
in a profound study of the period (appendix to vol. ii, "Geology"),
suggests that the new land from New Zealand to Antarctica may have
diverted the currents (sea and air) up the Indian Ocean, and caused a
low atmospheric pressure, much precipitation of moisture, and perpetual
canopies of clouds to shield the ice from the sun. Since the outer polar
regions themselves had been semi-tropical up to that time, it is very
difficult to see how this will account for a freezing temperature in
such latitudes as Australia and India. There does not seem to have been
any ice at the Poles up to that time, or for ages afterwards, so that
currents from the polar regions would be very different from what
they are today. If, on the other hand, we may suppose that the rise of
"Gondwana Land" (from Brazil to India) was attended by the formation
of high mountains in those latitudes, we have the basis, at least, of
a more plausible explanation. Professor Chamberlin rejects this
supposition on the ground that the traces of ice-action are at or near
the sea-level, since we find with them beds containing marine fossils.
But this only shows, at the most, that the terminations of the glaciers
reached the sea. We know nothing of the height of the land from which
they started.
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