In Pennsylvania and the states lying to the south the Mesozoic peneplain lies along the summits of the mountain ridges.  On the surface of this ancient plain, Tertiary erosion etched out the beautifully regular pattern of the Allegheny mountain ridges and their intervening valleys.  The weaker strata of the long, regular folds were eroded into longitudinal valleys, while the hard Paleozoic sandstones, such as the Medina and the Pocono, were left in relief as bold mountain walls whose even crests rise to the common level of the ancient plain.  From Virginia far into Alabama the great Appalachian valley was opened to a width in places of fifty miles and more, along a belt of intensely folded and faulted strata where once was the heart of the Appalachian Mountains.  In Figure 70 the summit of the Cumberland plateau (ab) marks the level of the Mesozoic peneplain, while the lower erosion levels are Tertiary and Quaternary in age.

LIFE OF THE TERTIARY PERIOD

Vegetation and climate.  The highest plants in structure, the dicotyls (such as our deciduous forest trees) and the MONOCOTYLS (represented by the palms), were introduced during the Cretaceous.  The vegetable kingdom reached its culmination before the animal kingdom, and if the dividing line between the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic were drawn according to the progress of plant life, the Cretaceous instead of the Tertiary would be made the opening period of the modern era.

The plants of the Tertiary belonged, for the most part, to genera now living; but their distribution was very different from that of the flora of to-day.  In the earlier Tertiary, palms flourished over northern Europe, and in the northwestern United States grew the magnolia and laurel, along with the walnut, oak, and elm.  Even in northern Greenland and in Spitzbergen there were lakes covered with water lilies and surrounded by forests of maples, poplars, limes, the cypress of our southern states, and noble sequoias similar to the “big trees” and redwoods of California.  A warm climate like that of the Mesozoic, therefore, prevailed over North America and Europe, extending far toward the pole.  In the later Tertiary the climate gradually became cooler.  Palms disappeared from Europe, and everywhere the aspect of forests and open lands became more like that of to-day.  Grasses became abundant, furnishing a new food for herbivorous animals.

Animal life of the tertiary.  Little needs to be said of the Tertiary invertebrates, so nearly were they like the invertebrates of the present.  Even in the Eocene, about five per cent of marine shells were of species still living, and in the Pliocene the proportion had risen to more than one half.

Fishes were of modern types.  Teleosts were now abundant.  The ocean teemed with sharks, some of them being voracious monsters seventy-five feet and even more in length, with a gape of jaw of six feet, as estimated by the size of their enormous sharp-edged teeth.