NEW GEOLOGICAL THEORIES AND OLD BIOGEOGRAPHICAL PROBLEMS

Outlines the nature of some new geological theories (Earth expansion; a pre-Late Permian land mass in the Pacific and circum-Pacific terranes; and a pre-Pangaean supercontinent). Even if the new geological ideas are correct (and they remain unsupported by other geological evidence) they would have had their effects too early to have affected recent biogeographical patterns, although allochthonous terranes might help to explain the distribution of some "Tethyan' fossils in the western regions of the Americas. -P.J.Jarvis