432 PKOF. NORDENSKIOLD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 



Plants do not occur in the Cretaceous beneath the Gault, whereas 

 immediately above it they appear in a great variety of forms. In 

 North Greenland then, as well as in Europe and America, the 

 vegetable world underwent great changes during the course of 

 the Cretaceous age." 



III. — The Miocene Fm^mation. 



During the Miocene Period masses of basalt, sand, and clay, to 

 a depth of many thousand feet, were piled together in the district 

 of Greenland we are now considering ; and by far the greater 

 part of the rocks on Disko Island and Noursoak Peninsula belong 

 to that epoch. The Greenland Miocene strata (of sedimentary 

 and eruptive origin) may be arranged under three divisions, 

 namely : — 



(a) Lowest. Sand or soft sandstone, with shale, coal-bands of 

 slight thickness, and ferruginous clay-beds, very rich in impres- 

 sions of plants, 



{b) Basalt, TiifF, and Lava, several thousand feet in thickness, 

 usually as regularly stratified as sand-beds, often alternating 

 with basalt beds. At about the middle of this basalt formation 

 layers of fossiliferous clay, sand, and ferruginous clay, of limited 

 thickness, are met with. 



(c) Loose layers of sand, and one or two bands of clay, deposited 

 on the southern coast of the Isle of Disko, between the basalt 

 rocks, and therefore of more recent date. 



From all these localities, separated from each other by basalt 

 strata, 2,000 feet thick, numerous fossils have been collected, 

 indicating, according to Heer, the Miocene Period. As the strata 

 are, nevertheless, in geological respects widely different from each 

 other, I give an account of each separately. 



III. a. — Upper Atanekerdluk strata. — At Atanekerdluk we 

 meet with fossils from two different stages, namely : (I) between 

 300 and 400 feet above the sea, shales with thin sand-beds and 

 coal-seams (e, fig. 12, further on), with fossils imbedded in black, 

 shale and belonging to the Upper Cretaceous (the Atane strata 

 described above, p. 430); and (2) thick sand-beds, with occasional 

 shales (c, c?), containing but few fossils. At 1,000-1,200 feet 

 th(;se layers of sand begin to be interstratified with a ferruginous 

 clay, which, as well as the sandstone close to it, is remarkably 

 rich in impressions of plants. The greatest part of the fossils 

 that have been brought home from Greenland belong, to this 

 locality, of the discovery and scientific examination of which I 

 have already given a succinct account. Here I will only add a 

 few words on the hitherto imperfectly, and in part, inaccurately, 

 described geognostic relations of the place. 



By the name " Atanekerdluk," the Greenlauders designate a little 

 peninsula, 400 feet high, connected with the mainland by a small 

 isthmus, in the southern part of the Waigat, and forming a projec- 

 tion from the cliffs of Noursoak, which are bold everywhere else, 

 and rise to 3,000 feet even close to the coast. This place was 

 formerly the seat of a Greenland colony, round a Danish " out- 

 post " (Utliggare), but is now uninhabited. Deserted house-sites 



