02.04.2013 Views

The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

136<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

As we have seen, when the paleontologists studied the life<br />

<strong>of</strong> the remote past they found the same thing. <strong>The</strong> distribu-<br />

tions <strong>of</strong> the fossil plants and animals did not seem to pay<br />

any attention to the present shapes or positions <strong>of</strong> the continents.<br />

<strong>The</strong>refore, not knowing what the geophysicists were<br />

up to or not caring the biologists and paleontologists decided<br />

between themselves that they were in need <strong>of</strong> some new<br />

continents, or rather, in need <strong>of</strong> some old, now nonexistent<br />

continents, or at least a large number <strong>of</strong> former land con-<br />

nections across the present oceans. And so they went right<br />

ahead, and invented them.<br />

Wegener, <strong>of</strong> course, managed to explain a mass <strong>of</strong> evidence<br />

<strong>by</strong> moving the continents (450:73-89). Since the refutation<br />

<strong>of</strong> his theory, the same evidence needs a new explanation.<br />

Dodson gave the evidence for a North Pacific land bridge<br />

(not Behring Strait) based on the distributions <strong>of</strong> 156 genera<br />

<strong>of</strong> plants (115:373). Gregory also produced evidence for a<br />

Pacific land bridge (191). DeRance and Feilden presented the<br />

evidence for a land connection between North America and<br />

Europe in the early Carboniferous (319:!!, 331-32). Coleman,<br />

basing himself no doubt on paleontological evidence,<br />

remarked that "India has many times been connected with<br />

Africa" (87:262).<br />

Dodson reconstructed the history <strong>of</strong> the Isthmus <strong>of</strong> Panama,<br />

as indicated <strong>by</strong> the distributions <strong>of</strong> fossil plants and<br />

animals. According to him, North and South America were<br />

connected in the Cretaceous and in the early Paleocene, but<br />

later in the Paleocene, Panama was completely submerged.<br />

During the following Eocene and Oligocene there were islands<br />

but no continuous land in the area. <strong>The</strong> islands were completely<br />

submerged late in the Oligocene. Land connection<br />

between the continents was re-established in the Pliocene,<br />

that is, very lately (115:375-76). It must be emphasized that<br />

the explanation for all these land changes is missing. <strong>The</strong>re<br />

is no basis in the geological evidence for the assumption that<br />

the isthmus was never more than just barely submerged.<br />

<strong>The</strong>re is no reason to exclude the possibility that it was rather

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!