CLIMATES OF GEOLOGIC TIME—-SCHUCHERT. 301 
temperate’? (1910). It was therefore a climate somewhat cooler 
than that of the Jurassic. On the other hand, the Neocomian series 
of King Karl’s Land has silicified wood, the trunks of which, accord- 
ing to Nathorst, are at least 80 centimeters in diameter and show 210 
annular rings. These rings are far better developed than in stems 
of the same age found in Europe, “ which indicates that the trees lived 
in a region where the difference between the seasons was extremely 
pronounced” (1912). 
During Comanchic time, in the temperate and tropical belts, the 
world had the greatest of all land animals, the dinosaurs, reptiles 
attaining a length in North America of 75 feet or more and in equa- 
torial German East Africa of probably more than 100 feet. Their 
bones range to 50° North latitude, and the animals must have lived 
in a fairly warm and moist climate. 
While the Lower Cretacic seas were prolific in life, the most char- 
acteristic shellfish of southern Europe, the Mediterranean countries, 
and Mexico were the limestone-making rudistids, large ground-living 
foraminifers (Orbitolina), and reef corals. In northern Europe and in 
the United States from southern Texas to Kansas nothing of these 
warm-water faunal elements is known. Itis recognized that the north 
European seas had Arctic connections by way of Scandinavia and 
Russia, and along the west coast of North America are seen many 
other boreal migrants as far south as California and even Mexico. 
These waters, however, were not cold. Thesame geographic distribu- 
tion prevailed in the Upper Cretacic of Europe. This distribution was 
first noted in Texas by Ferdinand Roemer in 1852, and he further 
observed that ‘‘in each case the European deposit is approximately 
10° farther north than its American analogue,’ and concluded, “that 
the differences between the northern and southern facies were due to 
climate and that the climatic relations between the two sides of the 
Atlantic were about the same in Cretaceous time as they are now.” 
(Stanton, 1910.) Even though Roemer’s conclusion as to climatic 
zones was founded on erroneous stratigraphic correlations, still his 
theory has long been looked upon favorably, but in 1908 Gothan 
showed that the fossil woods of the late Upper Cretacic of central Ger- 
many have distinct annual rings, while those of Egypt do not have a 
trace of them. The late Cretacic woods of Spitzbergen also have 
decided growth rings. Berry (1912) states that the climate of Upper 
Cretacic time was far more uniform than now and that there was an 
increase of warmth southward, Alabama having then a climate that 
was subtropical or even tropical. On the other hand, the early Upper 
Cretacic or Cenomanian flora of Atane in western Greenland, accord. 
ing to Nathorst, “is particularly rich in the leaves of Dicotyledonous 
trees, among which are found those of planes, tulip trees, and bread 
fruits, the last mentioned closely resembling those of the bread-fruit 
tree (Artocarpus incisa) of the islands of the southern seas’’ (1912). 
