[Re:] Landbridges and the Pacific

[Thomas Schlemmermeyer]

I am still studying Croizat's work. After I was taught that the conversion of
the first name into its Spanishform (Charles to Carlos for example) is normal
in Spanish countries, I wonder how manyofthenegative value judgements about
Croizat (confuse, eccentric) had scientific reason and how many were culturally
implied.

Another question is why Croizat puts certain words into quotation marks (such
as "moderno", "cruzar"). It seems to me that these are words which have wide
reaching theoretical implications.

On (         Tue, 28 Sep 1999 02:35:18 -0400
),         John Grehan <jrg13 at PSU.EDU> wrote:


>>
>>Please entrain, for me, data which connects the Hawaiian Islands to the
>>U.S. west coast via a land bridge...Croizat had no problem imagining this.
>
>I doubt I can be very entertaining, and since Fred makes no specific citation
>for me to evaluate, I will quote below a reference to Hawaii by Croizat 1958,
>vol 1, p. 798 (truncated to save on typing).
>
>Fig. 114. A diagramatic rendering of Pacific palaeogeography such as is
demanded
>by dispersal of "modern" type. Land connections are essentially required
>west, north and east...sector 1...answers an "insular block" within the
>general perimeter
>Samoa-Tuamotus-Hawaii that was in the competent past...contained sizeable cores
>of land...Note This map is not intended to give body to hypothetical
>"landbridges". It
>stands for a minumum of biogeographic requirements, nor is it implied, even
>suggested,
>that everything...was of "continental" mass and proportions.
>
>It seems to me that Croizat, here at least, was being cautious about the
>nature of
>former land in the Pacific and was not plunging into a miscellany of land
>bridges.
>
>Geologists acknowledge the Pacific as complex, and certainly controversial.
>It seems
>that biogeography might shed more light on Pacific paleogeography than
>geologists are able from surving geological formations.
>
>>Obviously continental rafting is responsible for a lot of currently
>>disconnected distribution.  The problem seems to be that Croizat seemed to
>>think just about anything (maybe all) might be explained by vicarience.
>
>I recall Croizat using this term once in the 1970's. He may have used it more
>than once, but if so, it was very rare.
>
>>Panbiogeography today, is, correctly, a lot less ridged,
>
>Really! In what way? This is interesting.
>
>and my argument is
>>with thinking that everything Croizat wrote is defendable.  A lot of it is
>>not.
>
>Perhaps. What is or is not defendable is an issue at the core of current
>debates.
>Methods and predictions that have been dismessed as indefensible in the past
>has since been shown to be otherwise, so its a fluid situation. Mayr once
>said that
>since Croizat was wrong about Galapagous how could be be right about anything
>else? And yet Croizat's geosynclinal hypothesis corresponds with island arc
>tectonic models for the eastern Pacific.
>
>John Grehan
>


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Thomas Schlemmermeyer
Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo
Caixa Postal 42694
CEP 04299-970
São Paulo, SP, Brasil