[34] It would seem, from Geikie's description of the Faroe Islands, that they may be a remnant of such connecting land, dating from the Cretaceous or Eocene period.
In the Palæozoic period, the distinctions already referred to, into continental plateaus, mountain ridges, and ocean depths, were first developed, and we find, already, great masses of sediment accumulating on the seaward sides of the old Laurentian ridges, and internal deposits thinning away from these ridges over the submerged continental areas, and presenting dissimilar conditions of sedimentation. It would seem also that, as Hicks has argued for Europe, and Logan and Hall for America, this Cambrian age was one of slow subsidence of the land previously elevated, accompanied with or caused by thick deposits of detritus along the borders of the subsiding shore, which was probably covered with the decomposing rock arising from long ages of subaërial waste.
In the coal formation age its characteristic swampy flats stretched in some places far into the shallower parts of the ocean.[35] In the Permian, the great plicated mountain margins were fully developed on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Jurassic, the American continent probably extended farther to the sea than at present. In the Wealden age there was much land to the west and north of Great Britain, and Professor Bonney has directed attention to the evidence of the existence of this land as far back as the Trias, while Mr. Starkie Gardiner has insisted on connecting links to the southward, as evidenced by fossil plants. So late as the Post-glacial, or early human period, large tracts, now submerged, formed portions of the continents. On the other hand, the interior plains of America and Europe were often submerged. Such submergences are indicated by the great limestones of the Palæozoic, by the chalk and its representative beds in the Cretaceous, by the Nummulitic formation in the Eocene, and lastly, by the great Pleistocene submergence, one of the most remarkable of all, one in which nearly the whole northern hemisphere participated, and which was probably separated from the present time by only a few thousands of years.[36] These submergences and elevations were not always alike on the two sides of the Atlantic. The Salina period of the Silurian, for example, and the Jurassic, show continental elevation in America not shared by Europe. The great subsidences of the Cretaceous and the Eocene were proportionally deeper and wider on the eastern continent, and this and the direction of the land being from north to south, cause more ancient forms of life to survive in America. These elevations and submergences of the plateaus alternated with the periods of mountain-making plication, which was going on at intervals, at the close of the Eozoic, at the beginning of the Cambrian, at the close of the Siluro-Cambrian, in the Permian, and in Europe and Western America in the Tertiary. The series of changes, however, affecting all these areas was of a highly complex character in detail.[37]