Tropical nature, and other essaysWallace, Alfred Russel
History
Tropical nature, and other essays
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Ecology -- Tropics; Natural history -- Tropics; Tropics
Let us now briefly review the conclusions at which we have arrived.
If we look back to remote Tertiary times, we shall probably find that
all our great continents and oceans were then in existence, and even
bore a general resemblance to the forms and outlines now so familiar
to us. But in many details, and especially in their amount of
communication with each other, we should observe important changes.
The first thing we should notice would be a more complete separation
of the northern and the southern continents. Now, there is only one
completely detached southern land--Australia; but at that period
Africa and South America were also vast islands or archipelagos,
completely separated from their sister continents. Examining them
more closely, we should observe that the great Euro-Asiatic continent
had a considerable extension to the south-east, over what are now
the shallow seas of Japan, China, and Java. In the south-west it
would include Northern Africa, the Mediterranean then forming two
inland seas; while to the west and north-west it would include the
British Isles, and perhaps extend even to Iceland and Greenland.
As a balance to these extensions, much of Northern Siberia and
North-Western Asia may have been under water; the peninsula of India
would be an island with a considerable south-west extension over
what are now the Laccadive and Maldive coral-reefs. The Himalayas
would be a moderate range of hills; the great desert plateau of
Central Asia a fertile plain; the greater part of the continent would
enjoy a tropical or subtropical climate, while even the extreme
north would support a luxuriant vegetation. This great continent
would abound in animal life, and would be especially remarkable
for its mammalia, which would comprise ancestral forms of all our
existing higher types, along with a number of those lower grades
of organisation (such as lemurs and opossums) now found chiefly in
the southern hemisphere.
Connected with this continent by what is now Behring Straits and the
Sea of Kamschatka, we should find North America, perhaps somewhat
diminished in the east, but more extensive in the south and north,
and abounding as now with great inland lakes which were situated
to the west of the present lake district. This continent seems to
have had a less tropical climate and vegetation than prevailed
in the eastern hemisphere, but it supported an almost equally
varied though very distinct fauna. Ancestral horses no larger than
dogs; huge tapir-like and pig-like animals; strange forms allied
to rhinoceroses; the Dinocerata--huge horned animals allied to
elephants and to generalised Ungulata; and the Tillodontia, still
more unlike anything now living, since they combined characters now
found separated in the carnivora, the Ungulata, and the rodents.
Ancestral Primates, allied to both the lemurs and the South American
monkeys, also inhabited this continent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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