Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections
-&? SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOLUME 82. NUMBER 6 THE PAST CLIMATE OF THE NORTH POLAR REGION BY EDWARD W. BERRY The Johns Hopkins University (Publication 3061) CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION APRIL 9, 1930 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOLUME 82, NUMBER 6 THE PAST CLIMATE OF THE NORTH POLAR REGION BY EDWARD W. BERRY The Johns Hopkins University Publication 306i i CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION APRIL 9, 1930 ZU £or& (gafttmore (prees BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A. THE PAST CLIMATE OF THE NORTH POLAR REGION 1 By EDWARD W. BERRY THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY The plants, coal beds, hairy mammoth and woolly rhinoceros ; the corals, ammonites and the host of other marine organisms, chiefly invertebrate but including ichthyosaurs and other saurians, that have been discovered beneath the snow and ice of boreal lands have always made a most powerful appeal to the imagination of explorers and geologists. We forget entirely the modern whales, reindeer, musk ox, polar bear, and abundant Arctic marine life, and remember only the seemingly great contrast between the present and this subjective past. Nowhere on the earth is there such an apparent contrast between the present and geologic climates as in the polar regions and the mental pictures which have been aroused and the theories by means of which it has been sought to explain the fancied conditions of the past are all, at least in large part, highly imaginary. Occasionally a student like Nathorst (1911) has refused to be carried away by his imagination and has called to mind the mar- velously rich life of the present day Arctic seas, but for the most part those who have speculated on former climates have entirely ignored the results of Arctic oceanography.
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