. Collected reprints, Essa Institute for Oceanography. Oceanography ^o 5067 December 10, 1966 NATURE 1 197 Indian Ocoan, which \\oiild ndd to tlio arou of GoiKhvima. Such additional ureas, if discovered, niiglit be paitiaily iiffsot by finding tliat the contiiiontal area around Now Zoalund is not hu-go as is indicated by tlio isoliath—which now inchidos an undersea area more than throe timoa as largo as this landmass itsolf. Our com]inta- tion has uneertairities, but there remains a close cc|uality of areas of CJondwana and Laurasia which would not bo altered ox
. Collected reprints, Essa Institute for Oceanography. Oceanography ^o 5067 December 10, 1966 NATURE 1 197 Indian Ocoan, which \\oiild ndd to tlio arou of GoiKhvima. Such additional ureas, if discovered, niiglit be paitiaily iiffsot by finding tliat the contiiiontal area around Now Zoalund is not hu-go as is indicated by tlio isoliath—which now inchidos an undersea area more than throe timoa as largo as this landmass itsolf. Our com]inta- tion has uneertairities, but there remains a close cc|uality of areas of CJondwana and Laurasia which would not bo altered oxcopt in 'letail by luiy now findinp;s regarding crustal extent. L'lio principle seems established that those two suporcoatinents, as the "drifters" thought, \v(>ro of almost idc^ntical size. Our result must be meaningful and so invites sonio speculation. Is tho Laurasia-Uondwana version of drift correct, or woro tho continontH in tlie Palaeozoic all part of a \u\iversal landmass like Wegener's Paiigaoa n« many modern diiftors suppose''''* ? Tho equal areas of Gond- wana and Laurasia would seem to argue for the reality of tliis two supercontinent version of drift and against tho Pangaca version. It is difficult to conceive of a reasonable process whoroby Pangaea would bo split into 0(|ual haivos —it wovild 1)0 fortuitous and so unlikely. Continental drifters would also like to know whether tho postulated mid-Mesozoic break-up and dispersal of tho continents was a unique event in geological history, or whether continents, from time to time, have split and drifted, reconfiguring their outline. Tho equivalency of areas argues for a simplicity of drift history—even possibly that tho mid-Mosozoic break-up was unique in Earth history. A speculation which might reasonably accoimt for tho equal areas of these two supercontinonts is as follows. Runcorn'''" has suggested that orogonic revolutions and contiueiitttl drift may have been controlled by tho growth of th
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