THE PAST CLI]\IATE OF THE NORTH POLAR REGION ' 

 By EDWARD W. BERRY 



THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 



The plants, coal beds, hairy mammoth and woolly rhinoceros ; the 

 corals, ammonites and the host of other marine organisms, chiefly 

 invertebrate bnt including ichthyosaurs and other saurians, that have 

 been discovered beneath the snow and ice of boreal lands have always 

 made a most powerful appeal to the imagination of explorers and 

 geologists. We forget entirely the modern whales, reindeer, musk ox, 

 l^olar bear, and abundant xA.rctic marine life, and remember only the 

 seemingly great contrast between the present and this subjective past. 

 Nowhere on the earth is there such an apparent contrast between the 

 ])resent and geologic climates as in the polar regions and the mental 

 pictures which have been aroused and the theories by means of which 

 it has been sought to explain the fancied conditions of the past are 

 all, at least in large part, highly imaginary. 



Occasionally a student like Nathorst (1911) has refused to be 

 carried away by his imagination and has called to mind the mar- 

 velously rich life of the present day Arctic seas, but for the most 

 part those who have speculated on former climates have entirely 

 ignored the results of Arctic oceanography. Recently, Kirk ' has mar- 

 shalled some of the evidence of the abundance of the present marine 

 life in the Arctic, and he concludes from this survey that marine 

 organisms are not dependable as indicators of geologic climates. 1 

 think this conclusion is impregnable, and therefore if we are ever to 

 get any information regarding past climates, the evidence will be fur- 

 ni.shed by fossil plants, and not too precisely either. Here again 

 prudence is the watchword ; imagination must be entirely suppressed, 

 and the distribution of recent plants must be understood and used. 



A correct solution of the problem is not only of prime interest to 

 geologists and paleontologists but it offers assurance to geophysicists 

 confronted with the now fashionable belief in wandering poles, and 



* Given in summary hcfort- llic ]-*ak'ontological Socict.v at tlic December, 1928, 

 meeting. 



'Kirk, lulwin, Fossil marine faunas as indicators of climatic conditions. .Xnn. 

 Rep. Smithsonian Inst, for 1927, pp. 299-307, 1928. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 82, No. 6 



