United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Of this plant the number of marked varieties figured and named is very great, and no less than three of them had been considered as distinct species by other botanists, while six of the others might have laid claim, with nearly equal propriety, to a like distinction. Size 1/2 diameter. a. Leaf. b. Flower magnified, one of the six petals wanting at d. Upper Miocene, Oeningen. c.
Both the leaves and seeds have been found at Oeningen, and bunches of compressed grapes of the same species have been met with in the brown coal of Wetteravia in Germany. Leaves of plants supposed to belong to the order Proteaceae have been obtained partly from Oeningen and partly from the lacustrine formation of the same age at Locle in the Jura.
Europe, during the Pliocene period, seems not to have enjoyed a climate fitting it to be the habitation of the quadrumanous mammalia; but we no sooner carry back our researches into Miocene times, where plants and insects, like those of Oeningen, and shells, like those of the Faluns of the Loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and land, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north of the Alps and Pyrenees.
This result followed the determination of the true position of the Oeningen beds in Switzerland, and of certain formations of "Brown Coal" in Germany. This European Miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of arborescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic types no longer associated together in any existing flora or geographical province.
I was surprised to find in the collection at New Haven a fine specimen of the great fossil salamander of Oeningen, the "Homo diluvii testis" of Scheuchzer. From New Haven I went to New York by steamboat.
Below this other strata occur with fish, tortoises, the great salamander before alluded to, fresh-water mussels, and plants. In No. 16 the fossil fox of Oeningen, galecynus Oeningensis, Owen, was obtained by Sir R. Murchison. In the 19th bed are numerous fish, insects, and plants, below which are marls of a blue indigo colour.
If we consider not merely the number of species but those plants which constitute the mass of the Lower Miocene vegetation, we find the European part of the fossil flora very much less prominent than in the Oeningen beds, while the foreground is occupied by American forms, by evergreen oaks, maples, poplars, planes, Liquidambar, Robinia, Sequoia, Taxodium, and ternate-leaved pines.
Among other points of resemblance with the living plane-trees, as we see them in the parks and squares of London, fossil fragments of the trunk are met with, having pieces of their bark peeling off. The vine of Oeningen, Vitis teutonica, Ad. Brong, is of a North American type.
This flora is remarkable for its resemblance to the European Miocene flora. The liquidambar, as well as several poplars and willows, cannot be distinguished from those of Oeningen; the same is true of an Elm, a Carpinus, and others.
The insect fauna is very rich, and, like the plants, indicates a more tropical climate than do the fossils of Oeningen presently to be mentioned.
Word Of The Day