Science. The First Animal Life. DID IT BEGIN WHERE GREELY HAS BEEN?

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1970, 21 February 1885, Page 6 (Supplement)

Science. The First Animal Life. DID IT BEGIN WHERE GREELY HAS BEEN ?

A iitEom has been enunciated that the poles were fir-it fitted to produce life, which consequently commenced at the northern and southern extremetiea of the globe, developing independently, but to a certain extent correspondingly, since oonditions were Biniilar. By the secular cooling of the globe the poles ultimately became unfitted to support life, and such forms as did not perish in the changes of ttie earth's surface Rlowly migrated toward the equator, changing in the course of age^, and ultimately giving rise to a fauna which, o/er most of the globe, consists of a mixture of northern and southern forms. Many facts derived from the northern hemisphere lend support to this theory, and the southern hemisphere has recently added new facto which tell in the same direction. The animals of the northern hemisphere are still almost identic*! throughout the world's circuit. The same families and even the same species of mammals and birds are common to the north of the Old World and of the New. To give a few examples, the elk or moose, the reindeer, the beaver, the lynx, the wolf, the fox, of Europe and Asia are specifically identical with those of America. The bison of America is closely allied to the aurochs of Europe, the brown bear of Europe to our own grizzly, theaeag to the wapiti or elk, and so on. Remains of mammals now regarded as tropical — suohos the elephant, hippopotamus, rhinocerouq, hyena, lion, etc. — are common in the tertiary strata of temperature and even Arctio regions. Thia is proof of a southern migration when climate, changed. In the southern point of South America, in desolate Patagonia, havn been found mammalian remains which tend to ahow that the tertiary fauna of Patagonia preceded that of the Arg >ntine Republic, to the north of it. Forrm of tho pampas are there, but are somewhat more generalised, as though older. Hooker has shown that seventy-seven species of plants are common to South Amerioa, New Zealand, and Tasmania. A small family of fishes (Galuxidie) and the marsupialia (kangaroos, wombat, opossum, eto.) are Australian and South American. A sort of submarine plateau connects Staten Island (part of the Terra del Fuego Archipelago) with South Georgia and other Antarotic lands, and it seems not unlikely that a great Antarctic continent once existed, the remains of whioh are Australia, New Zealand, etc., on the one hand, and Patagonia on the other. In Australia the marsupialia multiplied, and, spreading northward, mingled with the boreal fauna that had been driven southward. In South Amerioa the marsupialia did not greatly multiply, though they ppread, after the upheaval of the Isthmus of Panama, into North America, where they are represented by the opossum. The edentata (sloths, armadillos, anteatera and their relations) first appeared in Patagonia in the niiocene poriod, aud, spreading northward, became the characteristic animals of South Americi. Edentates (the aardvark or cape anteater, and the pangolins or scaly anleaturs) occur also in Afrioa, which was probably once eonneoted southward with the ancient Antarctic continent. In many cases tho animals of northern origin, which are the more numerous, can be distinguished from- the southern, but in other cased we cannot distinguish them, since on the one hand, animals which naturalists place in the same family on aooount of resemblances in structure may very possibly have had a distinct ancestry, and, on the other hand, the northern forms, which evidently predominate, have not only varied greatly in the courso of age**, but have penetrated far toward the southern extreinetieß of the continents. As regards the northern hemisphere, the resemblances between the fishes, inseots and inollusca of the old world and of tho n«w are even more striking than those of the higher animals.