The southern continent had deep wedges of the sea
driven into it. India, New Zealand, and Australia were
successively detached from it, and by the end of the Mesozoic it
was much as we find it to-day. The Arctic continent (north of
Europe) was flooded, and there was a great interior sea in the
western part of the North American continent.
This summary account of the levelling process which went on
during the Triassic and Jurassic will prepare us to expect a
return of warm climate and luxurious life, and this the record
abundantly evinces. The enormous expansion of the sea--a great
authority, Neumayr, believes that it was the greatest extension
of the sea that is known in geology--and lowering of the land
would of itself tend to produce this condition, and it may be
that the very considerable volcanic activity, of which we find
evidence in the Permian and Triassic, had discharged great
volumes of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere.
Whatever the causes were, the earth has returned to paradisiacal
conditions. The vast ice-fields have gone, the scanty and scrubby
vegetation is replaced by luscious forests of cycads, conifers,
and ferns, and warmth-loving animals penetrate to what are now
the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
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