The Geological History of PlantsDawson, John William, Sir
Science
The Geological History of Plants
Dawson, John William, Sir
Paleobotany
In a bulletin of the United States Geological Survey (1886), Dr. White
has established in the West the continuous stratigraphical succession of
the Laramie and the Wahsatch Eocene, thus placing the Laramie conformably
below the Lower Eocene of that region. Cope has also described as the
Puerta group a series of beds holding vertebrate fossils, and forming a
transition from the Laramie to the Wahsatch. White also testifies that
a number of fresh-water mollusks are common to the Wahsatch and the
Laramie. This finally settles the position of the Laramie so far as the
United States geologists are concerned, and shows that the flora is to be
regarded as Eocene if not Upper Cretaceous, in harmony with what has been
all along maintained in Canada. An important _résumé_ of the flora has
just been issued by Ward in the bulletins of the United States Geological
Survey (1887).
Before leaving this part of the subject, I would deprecate the remark,
which I see occasionally made, that fossil plants are of little value in
determining geological horizons in the Cretaceous and Tertiary. I admit
that in these periods some allowance must be made for local differences
of station, and also that there is a generic sameness in the flora of the
northern hemisphere, from the Cenomanian to the modern, yet these local
differences and general similarity are not of a nature to invalidate
inferences as to age. No doubt, so long as palæobotanists seemed obliged,
in deference to authority, and to the results of investigations limited
to a few European localities, to group together, without distinction, all
the floras of the later Cretaceous and earlier Tertiary, irrespective
of stratigraphical considerations, the subject lost its geological
importance. But, when a good series has been obtained in any one region
of some extent, the case becomes different. Though there is still much
imperfection in our knowledge of the Cretaceous and Tertiary floras
of Canada, I think the work already done is sufficient to enable any
competent observer to distinguish by their fossil plants the Lower,
Middle, and Upper Cretaceous, and the latter from the Tertiary; and, with
the aid of the work already done by Lesquereux and Newberry in the United
States, to refer approximately to its true geological position any group
of plants from beds of unknown age in the West.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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