No. 2388. TERTIARY FOSSIL PLANTS FROM VENEZUELA— BERRY. 557 



entire margins — features that distinguish existing lowland tropical 

 forests. 



It may therefore be concluded that this flora indicates a rain 

 forest climate, and that at the time it lived the ancient margin of 

 the Caribbean in this region belonged to the "tierra caliente," as 

 so much of it still does. 



The question of the geologic age of the flora is not nearly so simple 

 a problem nor one that can be as satisfactorily answered. All but 

 two of the species are new and hence without any known distribution 

 in other regions. None are represented in the Tertiary floras that 

 I have described from Costa Rica, Panama, or Dominica. I had 

 hoped to have collections from the Caroni series of Trinidad for 

 comparison, but these have not yet been received. None are present 

 in the undescribed Pliocene flora that I collected in Bolivia. 



The two species previously known — Reliconia elegans and Trigonia 

 varians — were both described by Engelhardt from near Santa Ana, 

 in the Cordillera de Bogota, from a tuff occurring in the mountains 

 along the Rio Magdalena at 970 meters (State of Honda). Un- 

 fortunately the age of the Santa Ana flora is unknown. Its describer, 

 Engelhardt, did not venture to suggest its age more precisely than 

 Tertiary. 



It comprises 35 species, and its chief contrast to the Venezuelan 

 flora is the presence of 10 different species of Lauraceae — a family 

 that, strangely enough, is not represented in the Venezuelan collec- 

 tions. I have previously suggested 7 that the Santa Ana flora was 

 lower Miocene and the same age as the flora from near Tumbez in 

 the Peruvian coastal region, that from the so-called Navidad beds 

 of Chile, and that from the Loja basin in southern Ecuador. My 

 reasons for this suggestion were the presence of the Santa Ana 

 species Persea macrophyMoides and Moschoxylon tenuinerve in the 

 Chilean lower Miocene; the presence of Phyllites strychnoides at Loja, 

 in Ecuador; and the presence of Condaminea grandifolia near Tumbez, 

 Peru, thus making 4 of its 35 species present in beds of known lower 

 Miocene age. 



In addition, I tentatively identified 8 fragments of six additional 

 species from Peru as questionably identical with Santa Ana forms. 9 

 These latter, however, I do not regard as of much weight in precise 

 correlation, since all were fragmentary and all of the identifications 

 were queried. 



Pointing toward a younger age are the facts that two of the Santa 

 Ana species — Nectand.ra areolata and Buettneria cinnamomifolia — are 

 undoubtedly present in Costa Rica in beds that are about the same 

 age or younger than the Gatun formation of the Canal Zone, the 



» Berry, E. W., Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., vol. 29, pp. 637-648, 1919. 



8 Idem. 



• Berry, E. W., Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 55, pp. 279-294, pi. 14-17, 1919. 



