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

60 EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
geologists made a rich discovery of fossils on the sides of lofty
Mount Weaver, in Latitude 86 58' S., about the same dis-
tance from the pole, and two miles above sea level. These
included leaf and stem impressions, and fossilized wood. In
1952 Dr. Lyman H. Dougherty, of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington, completing a study of these fossils, identified
two species of a tree fern called Glossopteris, once common
to the other southern continents (Africa, South America,
Australia), and a giant tree fern of another species. In addition,
he identified a fossil footprint as that of a mammallike
reptile. Henry suggests that this may mean that Antarctica,
during its period of intensive vegetation, was one of the most
advanced lands of the world as to its life forms (207).
Soviet scientists have reported finding evidences of a trop-
ical flora in Graham Land, another part of Antarctica, dating
from the early Tertiary Period (perhaps from the Paleocene
or Eocene) (364:13).
It is, then, little wonder that Priestly, in his account of his
expedition to Antarctica, should have concluded:
. . . There can be no doubt from what this expedition and
other expeditions have found that several times at least during past
ages the Antarctic has possessed a climate much more genial than that
of England at the present day , . . (34913:210).
Further evidence is provided by the discovery by British
geologists of great fossil forests in Antarctica, of the same type
that grew on the Pacific coast of the United States 20,000,000
years ago (206:9). This, of course, shows that after the earliest
known Antarctic glaciation in the Eocene, the continent did
not remain glacial, but had later episodes of warm climate.
Dr. Umbgrove adds the observation that in the Jurassic
Period the flora of Antarctica, England, North America, and
India had many plants in common (430:263).
There is one group of theories to which we cannot appeal
because of their inherent and obvious weaknesses. These
are the theories that try to explain warm and cold periods in
Antarctica by changes in land elevations, changes
in the