The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races by Emory Adams Allen
page 62 of 805 (07%)
page 62 of 805 (07%)
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time the bridge connecting Asia and America was severed.<52>
In Europe the Mediterranean area was elevated; but the land connecting Greenland with Europe sank, allowing the cold waters of the Arctic to communicate with both the North Sea and the Atlantic--England at that time forming part of the great peninsula extending north and west from Europe.<53> The climate during the Pliocene Age was cooler than that of the Miocene. This is marked in the vegetation of that period. The palms and the cinnamon trees, which in Miocene times grew in Germany, flourished no farther north than Italy during the Pliocene.<54> Count DeSaporta, who made special researches in the flora of this period, found the remains of a forest growth buried under lava on the side of a mountain in Cantal France, at an elevation of about four thousand feet above the level of the sea. This consisted principally of pines. This shows that probably all Northern Europe was covered with somber forests of pine. In the same section he found, buried under volcanic ash, a vegetation consisting mostly of deciduous trees--maples, alders, poplars, willows, elms, and ashes. As this was growing at the height Of about twenty-three hundred feet in Cantal France, it probably represents the vegetation of Britain and Northern Germany. Finally, the vegetation of Central and Southern France, as well as Northern Italy, was intermediate in character between the luxuriant evergreen forests of the Miocene Age and that now growing there. The tropical character of the vegetation was evidently passing away. The climate over a large part of Europe was now temperate, though probably warmer than at present.<55> In the Mammalia we have to notice the disappearance of some |
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