(c) By the fact that we find in the stone both fruits and seeds of the trees whose leaves are also found there.
(d) By the occurrence of insect remains along with the leaves.
2. The flora of Atanekerdluk is Miocene.
3. The flora is rich in species.
4. The flora proves without a doubt that North Greenland, in the Miocene epoch, had a climate much warmer than its present one. The difference must be at least 29° F.
Professor Heer discusses at considerable length this proposition. He says that the evidence from Greenland gives a final answer to those who objected to the conclusions as to the Miocene climate of Europe drawn by him on a former occasion. It is quite impossible that the trees found at Atanekerdluk could ever have flourished there if the temperature were not far higher than it is at present. This is clear from many of the species, of which we find the nearest living representative 10° or even 20° of latitude to the south of the locality in question.
The trees of Atanekerdluk were not, he says, all at the extreme northern limit of their range, for in the Miocene flora of Spitzbergen, lat. 78° N., we find the beech, plane, hazelnut, and some other species identical with those from Greenland, and we may conclude, he thinks, that the firs and poplars which we meet at Atanekerdluk and Bell Sound, Spitzbergen, must have reached up to the North Pole if land existed there in the tertiary period.
“The hills of fossilized wood,” he adds, “found by McClure and his companions in Banks’s Land (lat. 74° 27′ N.), are therefore discoveries which should not astonish us, they only confirm the evidence as to the original vegetation of the polar regions which we have derived from other sources.”
The Sequoia landsdorfii is the most abundant of the trees of Atanekerdluk. The Sequoia sempervirens is its present representative. This tree has its extreme northern limit about lat. 53° N. For its existence it requires a summer temperature of 59° or 61° F. Its fruit requires a temperature of 64° for ripening. The winter temperature must not fall below 34°, and that of the whole year must be at least 49°. The temperature of Atanekerdluk during the time that the Miocene flora grew could not have been under the above.[193]
Professor Heer concludes his paper as follows:—