TERTIARY FOSSIL PLANTS FROM COLOMBIA, SOUTH 



AMERICA 



By Edward W. Berry 



0/ Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 



In a paper published in 1913 Father Miguel Gutierrez' mentions 

 trunks and impressions of dicotyledonous leaves associated with the 

 coal seams at Guadalupe, but his conjectures regarding their probable 

 identity are unreliable and his illustrations are unrecognizable. Aside 

 from this paper I know of no publications on the Tertiary flora of 

 Colombia other than those of Engelhardt and the present writer. 



In 1895 Engelhardt^ described 35 species of plants from the tuffs 

 of Santa Ana in the upper Magdalena Valley, and 5 species from Buga 

 in the Cauca Valley which he referred to the Tertiary. Several of 

 these have been found in deposits of known Miocene age in Venezuela 

 Peru, southern Mexico, and Costa Rica, which would seem to indicate 

 a Miocene age for these Colombian plants described by Engelhardt. 



My contributions to Colombian paleobotany comprise the following 

 descriptions of fruits and seeds: A Simaruba stone from Guasca; Sac- 

 coglottis stones from Cipacon and drupes of Cordia from Guasca, 

 described in 1924;^ Anacardium fruits from Santo Ecce Homo, 

 Boyaca;^ Celtis stones from Pijiaquay;^ Vantanea stones from Ci- 

 pacon and a second species of Anacardium from Ovejas;* and seeds 

 of Musa from Guadalupe and Montserrate.'' 



A miscellaneous amount of leaf impressions and unrecognized car- 

 pological material has been awaiting study for several years, and it 

 is the purpose of the present paper to place this material on record. 

 For this material I am indebted to Maurice A. Rollot of Bogota, 

 W. P. Woodring, and Robert Anderson. In a region so little known 

 geologically it is impossible to be certain of the precise horizon of 

 much of the material. This is especially true of the continental 

 deposits, and too little is known of the fossil floras of tropical 

 America for the plants themselves to afford accurate chronological 



'Gutierrez, M., Geologia de Bogota y sus alrededores, Anales de Ingenieria, vol. 20, pp. 313-33], 1913. 



'Engelhardt, H., Abh. Senck. naturf. Qesell., vol. 19, pp. 24-41, 1895. 



•Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, vol. 51, pp. 61-67, figs. 1-22, 1924. 



<Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. 8, pp. 123-126, 1924. 



•Torreya, vol. 24, pp 44-46, 1924. 



»Pan Amer. Qeol., vol. 42, pp. 259-262, 1924. 



'Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. 10, pp. 530-537, 1925. 



No. 2795.-PROCEEDINGS U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, VOL. 75, ART. 24 

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