A History of Agriculture in India v1.c7.7

v1.c7.7

During the early part of the Cretaceous Period, the Tethys Ocean extended over wide areas. It spread over a great part of Europe. The southward extension of the Tethys flooded much of northern Africa with a series of embayments from Algeria to Egypt. A connection was established with the South Atlantic Ocean across the Gulf of Guinea through Algeria, Libya, the Sudan and Nigeria, converting the Sahara into a great island. In the eastern region, an arm of the Tethys spread over Iran, Pakistan, western India, and lower parts of the Narmada and the Tapti valleys; another arm invaded Assam, whereas embayments spreading northward from the Bay of Bengal merged with the arm of the Tethys in Assam. The sea at this time washed the east coast of India where the upper Gondwana deposits are locally associated with the marine fauna of the lower Cretaceous Age. The middle and the upper Cretaceous, especially in the Pondicherry-Tiruchirapalli sector, are mainly littoral. The fauna of this sector is similar to that of Malagasy (Madagascar) and South Africa and to that of the southern flank of the Assam range. Along the Narmada Valley on the west coast are some marine fossiliferous beds with fossils showing greater affinity with those of the Cretaceous of southern Arabia and Europe than with those of Assam and Tiruchirapalli regions. The dissimilarity indicates that there was still a sort of land barrier that separated the Bay of Bengal from the Arabian Sea. This land barrier has been called Lemuria, which included Peninsular India and Malagasy. The sea surrounding this long Indo-Malagasy island, with its dinosaur-infested forests, was in free communication with the Tethys to the north, as is shown by the presence of European species, or species with European relationships, in both the Narmada Valley and the Cretaceous of the east coast of India.