Observations on the Miocene Beds of Greenland

Abstract

‶We brought home—that is to say, my companion Mr Edward Whymper (brother of my old travelling friend Mr F. Whymper, a Foreign Member of your Society) and myself, under my direction—an immense load of specimens—leaves, fruits, twigs, and possibly a cone of some coniferous tree—principally from Atanakerdluk (lat. 70° 02′ 30″ N.), Kudlesaet, and Ounartok, all localities in the Waigatz Straits, on the Noursak Peninsula and Disco Island, where alone in all Greenland Miocene strata have been found. Extending over a very limited district, these strata are composed of a great variety of beds of sandstone, alternating with lignitic coal, and topped by shales of various descriptions. In all the sandstones and shales (with the exception of the coarse grits) I found more or less of vegetable impressions, but it was only in the thin layers of a hard clay slate impregnated with iron that they retained their impressions very distinctly. All these strata were cut across by trap-dykes, in some places standing out bare and wall-like from the denuded softer strata through which they had protruded. In other places the trap was interstratified with the sedimentary rocks, and in others again it stood out in bold basaltic (amorphous) headlands or skerries in the sea, from which circumstance, indeed, the principal fossil locality, At-ān-ak-ērd-lŭk (‘the rocks in the sea’), gets its name. ‶The stems I found at Kudlesaet, in lat. (by my observations, August 26, 1867) 70° 05′ 35″ N., wholly imbedded in coal in a horizontal position. The beds