[FQ] Meddelelser om Gronland, Hefte V., Copenhagen, 1883.
The plant-bearing beds of Greenland are as follows, in ascending order:
1. Cretaceous.
1. The Komé series, of black shales resting on the Laurentian gneiss. These beds are found at various other localities, but the name above given is that by which they are generally known. Their flora is limited to ferns, cycads, conifers, and a few endogens, with only Populus primæva to represent the dicotyledons. These beds are regarded as Lower Cretaceous (Urgonian), but the animal fossils would seem to give them a rather higher position. They may be regarded as equivalent to the Kootanie and Queen Charlotte beds in Canada, and the Potomac series in Virginia.
2. The Atané series. These also are black shales with dark-coloured sandstones. They are best exposed at Upernavik and Waigat. Here dicotyledonous leaves abound, amounting to ninety species, or more than half the whole number of species found. The fossil plants resemble those of the Dakota series of the United States and the Dunvegan series of Canada, and the animal fossils indicate the horizon of the Fort Pierre or its lower part. They may be regarded as representing the lower part of the Upper Cretaceous. The genera Populus, Myrica, Quercus, Ficus, Platanus, Sassafras, Laurus, Magnolia, and Liriodendron are among those represented in these beds, and the peculiar genera Macclintockia and Credneria are characteristic. The genus Pinus is represented by five species, Sequoia by five, and Salisburia by two, with three of the allied genus Baiera. There are many ferns and cycads.
3. The Patoot series. These are yellow and red shales, which seem to owe their colour to the spontaneous combustion of pyritous lignite, in the manner observed on the South Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie rivers. Their age is probably about that of the Fox-Hill group or Senonian, and the Upper Cretaceous of Vancouver Island, and they afford a large proportion of dicotyledonous leaves. The genera of dicotyledons are not dissimilar from those of Atané, but we now recognise Betula and Alnus, Comptonia, Planera, Sapotacites, Fraxinus, Viburnum, Cornus, Acer, Celastrus, Paliurus, Ceanothus, Zizyphus, and Cratægus as new genera of modern aspect.
On the whole there have been found in all these beds 335 species, belonging to 60 families, of which 36 are dicotyledonous, and represent all the leading types of arborescent dicotyledons of the temperate latitudes. The flora is a warm temperate one, with some remarkable mixtures of sub-tropical forms, among which perhaps the most remarkable are Kaidocarpum referred to the Pandaneæ, and such exogens as Ficus and Cinnamomum.
2. Tertiary.
4. The Unartok series. This is believed to be Eocene. It consists of sandstone, which appears on the shores of Disco Island, and possibly at some other places on the coast. The beds rest directly and apparently conformably on the Upper Cretaceous, and have afforded only eleven species of plants. Magnolia is represented by two species, Laurus by two, Platanus by two, and one of these said to be identical with a species found by Lesquereux in the Laramie,[FR] Viburnum, Juglans, Quercus, each by one species; the ubiquitous Sequoias by S. Langsdorfii. This is pretty clearly a Lower Laramie flora.
[FR] Viburnum marginatum of Lesquereux.