The cycads, and even the conifers, shrink before the higher type
of tree. The landscape, in Europe and America, begins to wear a
modern aspect. Long before the end of the Cretaceous most of the
modern genera of Angiosperm trees have developed. To the fig and
sassafras are now added the birch, beech, oak, poplar, walnut,
willow, ivy, mulberry, holly, laurel, myrtle, maple, oleander,
magnolia, plane, bread-fruit, and sweet-gum. Most of the American
trees of to-day are known. The sequoias (the giant Californian
trees) still represent the conifers in great abundance, with the
eucalyptus and other plants that are now found only much further
south. The ginkgoes struggle on for a time. The cycads dwindle
enormously. Of 700 specimens in one early Cretaceous deposit only
96 are Angiosperms; of 460 species in a later deposit about 400
are Angiosperms. They oust the cycads in Europe and America, as
the cycads and conifers had ousted the Cryptogams. The change in
the face of the earth would be remarkable. Instead of the groves
of palm-like cycads, with their large and flower-like
fructifications, above which the pines and firs and cypresses
reared their sombre forms, there were now forests of
delicate-leaved maples, beeches, and oaks, bearing nutritious
fruit for the coming race of animals.
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