Professor Chamberlin finds its flora
like that of "warm temperate" regions, and says that plants which
then flourished in latitude 72 degrees are not now found above
latitude 30 degrees.
There are, however, various reasons to believe that it is unsafe
to draw deductions from the climate of Greenland. There is, it is
true, some exaggeration in the statement that its climate was
equivalent to that of Central Europe. The palms which flourished
in Central Europe did not reach Greenland, and there are
differences in the northern Molluscs and Echinoderms which--like
the absence of corals above the north of England--point to a
diversity of temperature. But we have no right to expect that
there would be the same difference in temperature between
Greenland and Central Europe as we find to-day. If the warm
current which is now diverted to Europe across the Atlantic--the
Gulf Stream--had then continued up the coast of America, and
flowed along the coast of the land that united America and
Europe, the climatic conditions would be very different from what
they are. There is a more substantial reason. We saw that during
the Mesozoic the Arctic continent was very largely submerged,
and, while Europe and America rise again at the end of the
Cretaceous, we find no rise of the land further north.
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