HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE LARAMIE PROBLEM. 



43 



the fifties until his death he maintained its 

 Tertiary age. In the paper above quoted he 

 said: 



Whether the Laramie is Cretaceous and the Port Union 

 Tertiary are other questions, but they are certainly distinct 

 from each other — distinct in the general botanical facies of 

 their floras as well as in the absence of common species. 

 That the Fort Union is Tertiary there can be no reasonable 

 doubt; it has many species in common with the recognized 

 Tertiary in the Canadian provinces of North America, in 

 Greenland, and in the British islands, and it contains some 

 plants which are living at the present day, such as Onoclea 

 sensibilis, Taxodium distichum, Corylus americana, C. 

 rostrata, etc. Moreover, the grouping of the plants com- 

 posing it gives it a facies which enables one to recognize it 

 at a glance. The abundance of species and specimens of 

 Populus, Viburnum, and Corylus imparts to it an aspect as 

 different from that of the flora of the Laramie as are the 

 recent floras of Europe and America from each other. 



In his last published utterance on this subject 

 Newberry 40 made the following emphatic 

 statement : 



The floras of the Laramie and Fort Union groups are 

 totally distinct, and these formations should be referred to 

 different geological systems— the Fort Union to the Ter- 

 tiary and the Laramie to the Cretaceous. 



In 1-896 W. H. Weed " published a short 

 paper entitled "The Fort Union formation," 

 in which, after briefly reviewing the early his- 

 tory of the Fort Union and Newberry's con- 

 tention that it should be referred to the Ter- 

 tiary, he described the geologic section in the 

 vicinity of the Crazy Mountains, in Montana, 

 where, he said, the Fox Hills, Laramie, Living- 

 ston, and Fort Union formations are super- 

 imposed. This view I hold to be in the main 

 correct, although, as will be shown later in the 

 discussion of the Livingston formation, there 

 are many who do not accept it. In any event, 

 it was made plain that the Fort Union forma- 

 tion of this region was above beds that should 

 properly be referred to the Laramie or were 

 in its position. 



More than 25 years ago I became convinced 

 of the correctness of Newberry's conclusion as 

 to the Tertiary age of the Fort Union formation, 

 and in many papers and reports published 

 since that time I have consistently adhered to 

 this view. It is perhaps not necessary further 

 to allude to these papers, nor is it possible to 

 fix an exact date on which the Fort Union 

 became generally accepted as a Tertiary unit. 



"Newberry, J. S., The Laramie group: Geol. Soc. America Bull., 

 vol. 1, p. 525, 1890. 

 « Am. Geologist, vol. 12, pp. 201-211, 1896. 



The term with the present accepted applica- 

 tion has been in current use for a dozen years 

 or more and apparently is no longer seriously 

 questioned. 



As an example of the completeness of this 

 change mention may be made of the treatment 

 of the Fort Union in the reports of the Geologi- 

 cal Survey of North Dakota. Thus, in the 

 third biennial report of the State geologist, 

 published in 1904, the term Fort Union does 

 not occur, all beds under consideration being 

 referred to the Laramie, but in the fifth biennial 

 report, issued in 1908, the conditions were 

 reversed and the Laramie was no longer 

 accepted as present, all the beds being referred 

 to the Fort Union or Lance. In a geologic 

 map of North Dakota, published by A. G. 

 Leonard" in 1913, the Laramie was not recog- 

 nized, but nearly half of the State was shown 

 to be covered by the Fort Union formation. 

 In the text accompanying this map Leonard 

 said: 



The Fort Union is one of the best-known formations of 

 the Northwest. It covers a vast area east of the Rocky 

 Mountains, -stretching from Wyoming to the Arctic Ocean 

 in the valley of the Mackenzie River and including part 

 of several Canadian provinces, much of western North 

 Dakota, eastern Montana, northwestern South Dakota, 

 and central and eastern Wyoming. 



"LARAMIE" IN THE CANADIAN PROVINCES. 



It appears that as early as 1873 George M. 

 Dawson, while acting as geologist to the British 

 North American Boundary Commission, noted 

 the presence at certain points along the inter- 

 national boundary of lignite-bearing beds that 

 he identified with the "Great Lignitic or Fort 

 Union group" of Hayden, as exposed along 

 Missouri River. This view was affirmed the 

 following year in an article on the "Lignite 

 formations of the West," 43 in which this state- 

 ment was made : 



In view of the evidence of the preponderant animal and 

 vegetable forms, it seems reasonable to take the well-marked 

 base of the Lignite series as' that of the lowest Tertiary, at 

 least at present. The formations described belong to this 

 lowest Tertiary, being in fact an extension of Hayden's Fort 

 Union group, and from analogy may be called Eocene. 



So far as I have been able to ascertain, the 

 term Laramie was first applied in the Canadian 

 provinces also by Dawson " in his ' ' Report on 



« The geological map of North Dakota: North Dakota Univ. Quart. 

 Jour., vol. 4, No. 1, October, 1913. 



48 Dawson, G. M., Canadian Naturalist, new ser., vol. 7, p. 252, 1874. 



"Dawson, G. M., Canada Geol. Survey Eept. Progress for 1879-80, pp . 

 127-134B. 



