Abstract
IN discussing the relationships between the amphibian faunas of South Africa and Madagascar in the Annals of the Transvaal Museum for April, Mr. J. Hewitt accepts the theory of an early land connection between Australia, India, Madagascar, the Seychelles, and South Africa, which was sundered between Australia and Africa after the Lower Cretaceous, and was elsewhere broken up into islands in the early Tertiary. The connection between Madagascar and India persisted until the Eocene, or perhaps later, as an archipelago, and Africa may have been connected by swamps with Madagascar until the early Pliocene. Another land-bridge connecting South Africa and South America by way of the Atlantic is likewise accepted. The fauna of the whole area is considered to have had many features in common; but after the separation of Madagascar and the formation of the African continent the latter area was invaded by a Palæarctic fauna, which could not reach Madagascar. The fauna of that island accordingly seems to represent in a modernised form—with a few additions—the one originally common to the southern Ethiopian area.
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Amphibian Faunas of South Africa and Madagascar . Nature 88, 228 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088228a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088228a0