LATER TERTIARY (MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE). 839 



The Tertiary elastics at Atanikerdluk attain a thickness of not less than 1,500 feet, not 

 including the intruded basalts at least 200 feet thick. The horizon of most of the plants 

 described by Heer as Miocene is assumed to be near the base of that series, the demarcation of 

 which appears to be purely arbitrary."* It is more probable that the age of the plants now 

 generally conceded by paleobotanists to be Oligocene may even be Eocene instead of Miocene. 

 No remains of marine animals have as yet been discovered with these plants. 



The Tertiary clastic zone appears to be thinner west of Atanikerdluk, and at Patoot and 

 Atane it is presumably represented by the upper sandstone horizon 200 to 300 feet in thickness. 

 At the western end of the peninsula its presence is established in the occurrence of "Atanikerd- 

 luk" plants. On the north coast east of Niakornat there may be a slight development of this 

 2^ne, and it evidently is represented in the interior east of Kook. 



Tertiary strata of unknown position occur in western Ellesmere Land. Schei''"'^" 

 says: 



In the depressions between the mountains of Mesozoic sandstones abutting on Heureka 

 Sound are in many places thick deposits of light quartz sand with embedded strata of lignite. 

 The same is also the case in the lowlands east of Blaamanden and at the head of Stenkulfjord 

 in Baumann Fjord. In addition to the lignite, masses of slaty clay were also found at the 

 latter place, in which were well-preserved remains of Sequoia langsdorfii, Taxodium distichum 

 var. miocenum, and some others, well-known witnesses to a southern vegetation in these regions 

 in a geologically late period — that is, the Miocene. 



Descriptions of the eruptive rocks follow in the original work. 



"■ The conglomeratic sandstone at 1,000 feet above tide at Atanikerdluk, assumed by the writers to be the base 

 of the Tertiary at that point, is the only hypothetical lithological bench mark observed in any section. 



