Even if the few fossil species which are common to the Old and New Worlds be kept wholly out of view, the general parallelism in the successive forms of life, in the stages of the widely separated palaeozoic and tertiary periods, would still be manifest, and the several formations could be easily correlated.
These observations, however, relate to the marine inhabitants of distant parts of the world: we have not sufficient data to judge whether the productions of the land and of fresh water change at distant points in the same parallel manner. We may doubt whether they have thus changed: if the Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought to Europe from La Plata, without any information in regard to their geological position, no one would have suspected that they had coexisted with still living sea-shells; but as these anomalous monsters coexisted with the Mastodon and Horse, it might at least have been inferred that they had lived during one of the latter tertiary stages.
When the marine forms of life are spoken of as having changed simultaneously throughout the world, it must not be supposed that this expression relates to the same thousandth or hundred-thousandth year, or even that it has a very strict geological sense; for if all the marine animals which live at the present day in Europe, and all those that lived in Europe during the pleistocene period (an enormously remote period as measured by years, including the whole glacial epoch), were to be compared with those now living in South America or in Australia, the most skilful naturalist would hardly be able to say whether the existing or the pleistocene inhabitants of Europe resembled most closely those of the southern hemisphere. So, again, several highly competent observers believe that the existing productions of the United States are more closely related to those which lived in Europe during certain later tertiary stages, than to those which now live here; and if this be so, it is evident that fossiliferous beds deposited at the present day on the shores of North America would hereafter be liable to be classed with somewhat older European beds. Nevertheless, looking to a remotely future epoch, there can, I think, be little doubt that all the more modern MARINE formations, namely, the upper pliocene, the pleistocene and strictly modern beds, of Europe, North and South America, and Australia, from containing fossil remains in some degree allied, and from not including those forms which are only found in the older underlying deposits, would be correctly ranked as simultaneous in a geological sense.
The fact of the forms of life changing simultaneously, in the above large sense, at distant parts of the world, has greatly struck those admirable observers, MM. de Verneuil and d'Archiac. After referring to the parallelism of the palaeozoic forms of life in various parts of Europe, they add, "If struck by this strange sequence, we turn our attention to North America, and there discover a series of analogous phenomena, it will appear certain that all these modifications of species, their extinction, and the introduction of new ones, cannot be owing to mere changes in marine currents or other causes more or less local and temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the whole animal kingdom." M. Barrande has made forcible remarks to precisely the same effect.