HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE LARAMIE PROBLEM. 



39 



tinental formationB nor for the varying fades of faunas 

 and floras; that the asserted magnitude of the break be- 

 tween Laramie and Lance rests not on evidence but on a 

 definition of the Laramie; and that no really adequate evi- 

 dence has been adduced of its relations to the Cretaceous- 

 Tertiary break in Europe. The paleobotanic argument 

 for placing the Lance in the Tertiary is the resemblance 



their absence from the Laramie is obviously due to a differ- 

 ence in environmental conditions. The fades of the 

 fauna is different, and much, ( if not all, of the difference 

 in flora should be ascribed to this cause. 



For these and many other reasons the evidence in favor 

 of transferring the Lance and associated formations to the 

 Tertiary appears to me inconclusive and iH directly in 



Figure 1.— Approximate correlations of typical formations of late Cretaceous and early Tertiary in Europe and western America, based on 

 their vertebrate faunas. After W. D. Matthew, Geol. Soc. America Bull., vol. 25, p. 393, 1914. 



of its flora to that of the Paleocene and its great, difference 

 from that of the true Laramie. But there is no evidence 

 that the Lance flora was absent from Europe in the late 

 Cretaceous, and the Laramie clearly represents a different 

 fades from the Lance. Dr. Knowlton has insisted strongly 

 on the entire absence of dinosaurs in the true Laramie, 

 apparently with the idea that it showed it to be much older 

 than the Lance. But as the same phyla of dinosaurs arte 

 present in the older Belly River and jn the newer Lance, 



conflict with the evidence from fossil vertebrates, so far 

 as I am able to understand it. 



The final paper of the symposium was pre- 

 sented by W. J. Sinclair 30 and later published 

 under joint authoriship with Walter Granger. 



»o Sinclair, W. J., and Granger, Walter, Paleocene deposits of the San 

 Juan Basin, N. Mex.: Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. Bull., vol. 33, pp. 297-316; 

 1914- 



