Darwin said in his autobiography that his theory of biological evolution was inspired by Ryle's geological gradient theory, the so-called geological gradient theory is that Ryle believes that the earth we live on is always slowly and gradually changing, thus prompting Darwin to come up with the theory of the origin and evolution of species. To this end, Darwin dedicated the second edition of his Expeditionary Diary to Ryle. Interestingly, continental drift, a major geological theory, in turn, has gained important insights from the biological aspect.
The biological mono-ancestral view of the origin of species holds that the same species cannot be formed independently in two regions, far apart, but must originate in one region and then spread directly, or through a third, to another. At present, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, which is far apart from the ocean, there is a relationship between many organisms, which indicates that there has been some kind of transmission and species exchange between them.
For example, there is a kind of garden snail found in places such as Germany and the United Kingdom, but also in North America on the other side of the Atlantic. In North America, garden snails live mainly in some parts adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean. The snail is known for its slow pace, crawling only 1.5 millimeters per second, or 5.4 meters per hour, exactly one thousandth of the speed at which humans can walk. Could it be that it has the ability to cross a thousand waves across the Atlantic Ocean and spread from one side of the continent to another?
Another example is earthworms, which have some species attributes that live from China and Japan in the east, to Western Europe in the west, and even across the Atlantic Ocean, appearing in the eastern United States. The western United States, far from the Atlantic, cannot be seen. On both sides of the South Atlantic, more ancient earthworm species such as the tongue earthworm and the lesser hairy earthworm subfamily have emerged. This shows that the South Atlantic had geographical conditions that allowed earthworms to pass through more ancient times.
In the distribution of several animals in South America, Africa and Australia, lungfish, a large fish, can be found on all three continents, which is a large fish that can reach one or two meters in length. They can breathe both in their gills and lungs, but they are freshwater fish and clearly do not have the ability to cross the ocean. The three continents are also inhabited by several kinds of related but flightless birds, such as ostriches, three-toed birds and so on.
On both sides of the South Atlantic, in West africa and South America, there is a species of manatee that lives in rivers and warm offshore shallow waters, and it is unlikely that there will be a wide Atlantic Ocean. Among them, hippos live in both Africa and on the island of Madagascar. As for gorillas, hummingbirds, etc., it seems that they also appeared in the recent geological period when these continents have been separated.
In addition to the distribution of modern organisms, what is more telling is the paleontological fossils preserved in the strata. For example, fossils of tongue-toothed plants were once widely distributed in the Late Paleozoic strata of the Indian subcontinent and the southern hemisphere, and are a powerful testimony to the existence of a unified southern paleoclement. Another example is a reptile called a middle dragon, whose fossils are found in the Carboniferous Permian strata of Brazil and South Africa, but no fossils of such middle dragons have been found elsewhere in the world, indicating that they spread directly from one place to another. But the dragon is a reptile that lives in freshwater, can it fly over the vast Atlantic Ocean with wings?
Of course, these little animals couldn't have become so extraordinary. Paleontologists believe that the Atlantic Ocean of the past must be different from the Atlantic of the modern period.