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At the foot of these mountains, on the side both of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, are found a series of tertiary strata, which form, for the most part, a line of low hills occupying the space between the older chain and the sea. Brocchi was the first Italian geologist who described this newer group in detail, giving it the name of the Subapennine.
For more than two centuries the shelly strata of the Subapennine hills afforded matter of speculation to the early geologists of Italy, and few of them had any suspicion that similar deposits were then forming in the neighbouring sea.
Another tertiary group occurring in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux and Dax, in the South of France, was examined by M. de Basterot in 1825, who described and figured several hundred species of shells, which differed for the most part both from the Parisian series and those of the Subapennine hills.
The other example occurs in Italy, where strata containing many fossils similar to those of Bordeaux were observed by Bonelli and others in the environs of Turin, subjacent to strata belonging to the Subapennine group of Brocchi.
He ascertained by dredging that living testacea were there grouped together in precisely the same manner as were their fossil analogues in the inland strata; and while some of the recent shells of the Adriatic were becoming incrusted with calcareous rock, be observed that others had been newly buried in sand and clay, precisely as fossil shells occur in the Subapennine hills.
Post-glacial : Upper diluvial. Glacial : Lower diluvial. Arverne : Upper pliocene. Subapennine : Lower pliocene. Falun : Upper miocene. Limbourg : Lower miocene. Aquitaine : Upper oligocene. Ligurium : Lower oligocene. Gypsum : Upper eocene. Coarse chalk : Middle eocene. London clay : Lower eocene. White chalk. : Upper cretaceous. Green Sand : Middle cretaceous. Neocomian : Lower cretaceous.
Newer Pliocene Strata of the Upper Val d'Arno. Older Pliocene of Italy. Subapennine Strata. Older Pliocene Flora of Italy.
The rarity of individuals in the extinct species is such as to imply that they were already on the point of dying out, having flourished chiefly in the earlier Pliocene times, when the Subapennine strata were in progress.
The middle tertiary of the Loire and Gironde had, according to the specific determinations of the same conchologist, 17 per cent, and formed the Miocene division. The Subapennine beds contained 35 to 50 per cent, and were termed Older Pliocene, while still more recent beds in Sicily, which had from 90 to 95 per cent of species identical with those now living, were called Newer Pliocene.
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