IV.—Heer's Flora Fossilis Arctica

• Published in: Geological Magazine
• Main Author: Scott, Robert H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1872
• Subjects: Geology; Canada; Greenland; Bear Island; Heer; Spitzbergen
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0016756800467737; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0016756800467737

In vol. ii. of his Flora Fossilis Arctica, Professor Oswald Heer has treated of the Fossil Flora of Bear Island, and shown that it belongs to the Lower Carboniferous Formation, of which it forms the lowest beds (named by him the “Ursa” beds), close to the junction with the Devonian. The Yellow Sandstone of Kiltorcan in Ireland, the Grauwacke of the Vosges, and the southern part of the Black Forest, and of St. John in Canada, belong to the same group. In the summer of 1870 two young Swedish naturalists (Wilander and Nathorst) discovered this same formation in the Klaas Billen Bay of the Eisfiord in Spitzbergen, and brought home fine specimens of Lepidodendron Veltheimianum , and Stigmaria ficoides . It has also been found in West Greenland, for Prof. Nordenskiold tells us that the Swedish expedition, which went to Disco in the course of last summer, to fetch the meteorite, weighing 25 tons, which he discovered at Ovifak in that island, has brought home fossil plants of true Carboniferous age.