3i8 T. C. CHAM BERLIN 



no leaves and but few acorns, but the upper bed (designated No. 

 3 by Sellards) contains many leaf layers alternating with sand 

 laminae."^ 



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 I 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 upper beds (No. 3) 

 mark successive seasonal layers of valley filling in the narrow valley of a small 

 stream. This stream was apparently always small, and the marvelous abund- 

 ance of fossils at this one point seems to be due to a bar or sink-hole or similar 

 cache formed near the junction of the two lateral branches which united near 

 this point to form the main stream. The determinable plants are represented 

 almost exclusively by fruits or seeds, as the leaves, with the exception of the 

 coriaceous oaks, which are abundant, were too thoroughly decayed before they 

 were buried to retain their identity.^ , 



After a summary grouping and discussion of species, Dr. 

 Berry concludes: 



In my judgment and in the ordinary acceptance of that term this flora is 

 unquestionably of late Pleistocene age. 



Regarding its bearing on the interesting problem of the age of the human 

 and associated mammalian and other remains at Vero, my study of the locality 

 furnishes the following somewhat categorical conclusions. The underlying 

 shell marl which forms a definite and undisputed datum plane, is late Pleisto- 

 cene in age. Its species all exist in near-by waters at the present time 



It follows that the vertebrate remains which are so numerous at Vero cannot 

 possibly be of Middle or Early Pleistocene age unless they are regarded as hav- 

 ing been reworked from older deposits, and I cannot conceive that this was 

 possible, nor do the vertebrate paleontologists who have examined the deposits 



consider that such was the case Nothing is more reasonable than to 



suppose that the larger elements in the Middle Pleistocene fauna of more 

 northern areas should have lingered for thousands of years in this more genial 

 southern clime until the presence of man in considerable numbers and the 

 changing climate, as is attested by the fossil plants, should have brought about 

 the extinction of a large percentage of the fauna. The fauna itself confirms 

 the rather limited data furnished by the fossil flora of this change in climate, 



'Symposium 2, Jour. Geol., XXV (October-November 1917), 661. 

 ^ Ninth Annual RepL, Florida Geol. Survey, 191 7, pp. 19-20. 



