THE FOSSIL PLANTS FROM VERO, FLORIDA 



EDWARD W. BERRY 



Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 



The discovery of human remains associated with an extinct 

 mammalian fauna at Vero, Florida, has excited a great deal of local 

 and general interest, and various theories regarding the age of these 

 remains and the manner of their occurrence have already been 

 advanced, and admirable accounts of the local geology have been 

 given by Sellards and others. 1 It is therefore unnecessary for me 

 to repeat any of these details in connection with the present pre- 

 liminary abstract of my study of the fossil plants. 



Plant remains in the form of laminae of impure peat or scattered 

 fruits, chiefly acorns, are present from the bottom to the top of the 

 deposits overlying the shell marl which forms the base of the section. 

 The lower sands (designated No. 2 by Sellards) have yielded no 

 leaves and but few acorns, but the upper bed (Sellards, No. 3) con- 

 tains many leaf layers alternating with sand laminae, and it is from 

 the latter horizon that all of the plants enumerated in the following 

 pages have been collected, with the exception of one species of 

 acorn which is common to both beds. 



Recent and extinct mammalian and other bones occur in both 

 layers, and human remains are also found in both beds. After a 

 thorough study of the local sections and the paleontologic evidence 

 ,1 am convinced that there is no hiatus between beds Nos. 2 and 3 

 and that there is no great difference in age from the bottom to the 

 top of the section, although it records changing physical conditions 

 and necessarily becomes gradually more and more recent as the top 

 of the section is approached. The lower sand marks the recession 

 of the sea in which the underlying shell marl was formed. The 



■E. H. Sellards, Am. Jour. Sci. (IV), XLII (1916), 1-18; Eighth Ann. Rept. 

 Florida Geol. Surv., 1916, pp. 122-60, Pis. 15-31; Science, N.S.,XLIV (1916), 615-17; 

 Jour. Geol., XXV (1917), 4-24, Figs. 1-4; R. T. Chamberlin, ibid., XXV (1917), 

 25-39, Figs. 1-9; T. W. Vaughan, ibid., pp. 40-42; A. Hrdlicka, ibid., pp. 43-51, 

 Figs. 1, 2; O. P. Hay, ibid., pp. 52-55; G. G. MacCurdy, ibid., pp. 56-62, Figs. 1-6. 



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