Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I
Found This Dicotyledonous Petrified Wood Only At The Surface Of The
Soil And Not Inclosed In The Sandstone Of The Llanos.
M. Caillaud made
the same observation on going to the Oasis of Siwa.
The trunks of
trees, ninety feet long, inclosed in the red sandstone of Kifhauser
(in Saxony), are, according to the recent researches of Von Buch,
divided into joints, and are certainly monocotyledonous.) sometimes
dicotyledonous, indicate that those sandstones belong to the more
recent formations which fill the plains between the Cordillera of the
Parime and the coast Cordillera, as the molassus of Switzerland fills
the space between the Jura and the Alps? It is not easy, when several
formations are not perfectly developed, to determine the age of
arenaceous rocks. The most able geologists do not concur in opinion
respecting the sandstone of the Black Forest and of the whole country
south-west of the Thuringer Waldgebirge. M. Boussingault, who passed
through a part of the steppes of Venezuela long after me, is of
opinion that the sandstone of the Llanos of San Carlos, that of the
valley of San Antonio de Cucuta and the table-lands of Barquisimeto,
Tocuyo, Merida and Truxillo belong to a formation of old red sandstone
or coal. There is in fact real coal near Carache, south-west of the
Paramo de las Rosas.
Before a part of the immense plains of America was geologically
examined, it might have been supposed that their uniform and continued
horizontality was caused by alluvial soils, or at least by arenaceous
tertiary strata.
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