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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: relationship in the same continent between the dead and
the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light
on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their
disappearance from it, than any other class of facts.
It is impossible to reflect on the changed state of the
American continent without the deepest astonishment. Formerly
it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we
find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent, allied
races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and
armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might
have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative
 The Voyage of the Beagle |