New Zealand and the theory of continental Drift

New Zealand and the Theory of Continental Drift

Why does New Zealand not have crocodiles?

New Zealand was once connected to Australia at a time when crocodiles were only just starting to come into existence. Crocodiles back then looked very different then they do now. New Zealand broke away from Australia before those crocodiles appeared in New Zealand.

Why is New Zealand's only a mammal a bat?

Prior to human settlement, the mammals of New Zealand only consisted of several species of bats other than marine mammals. So why do we only have bats? Well, New Zealand, once again, broke off from Australia before these started to come into existence. Australian mammals such as kangaroos, wallabies, dingoes, koalas and possums evolved after New Zealand and Australia separated.

Why is there no evidence of woolly mammoths ever existing in New Zealand?

Back in the time of Pangaea, New Zealand was on the warmer half of Earth and our climate was too warm, where as the mammoths were in the part of the world where the climate was cold and much different.

Wetas and tuataras are living fossils. What does this mean?

The tuatara is the last member of an order of reptiles that lived, along with the dinosaurs, 225 million years ago. The order is rhynchocephalia, which is Greek for"beak head." The term living fossil is a term used for a living organism that has remained relatively unchanged from earlier geological times and whose close relatives are usually extinct.