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

LIFE 321
to find the conditions they are used to, they may continue to
exist indefinitely.
At the same time, it is equally true that any kind of animal
or plant may succumb, in the course of the usual and con-
tinuous competition between life forms, and the local or
transitory climatic variations that are always occurring. It
would distort the picture to forget this fact. Furthermore,
recent studies have shown that new varieties of plants and
animals can appear within very short periods of time, on the
order of a century or less, if they live in conditions of isola-
tion (115:365). But these rapidly produced varieties are not
the same, of course, as established species.
A factor which, undeniably, must produce pressure for
profound change in the forms of life is major climatic change.
Clearly, this will apply what evolutionists call "strong selection
pressure." In this case life forms will have but three
alternatives: to migrate, to adapt, or to die. Geologists and
biologists have never denied the truth of this: Coleman, for
example, recognized the importance of the glacial periods in
"hastening and intensifying" the process of evolution (87:62).
Lull recognizes the importance of basic climatic change,
thus:
. . . For changes of climate react directly upon plant life, and
hence both directly and indirectly upon that of animals, while re-
striction or amplification of habitat and the severance and formation
of land-bridges provide the essential isolation, or by the introduction
of new forms increase competition, both of which stimulate evolution-
ary progress (278:84).
The problem has been, until now, that major climatic
changes, and concomitant changes in the distribution of land
and sea, could not be explained by any acceptable theory.
They were inexplicable events in themselves; their coincidence
in time was inexplicable. Even more serious, they were
assumed to have happened only at such extremely long inter-
vals that the total number of such major climatic "revolu-
tions" was too small to account for more than a very insig-
nificant portion of evolutionary history.