Re: your mail

[Chuck Prime <prime@winternet.com>]

On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, Michael Sternberg wrote:

> Grasses, as we know them, *did not* arise in the Cretaceous.
> 
> "Although clear evidence for the development of grasslands does not appear
> prior to the mid-late Miocene, modern tribes of grasses are known from
> megafossils from the late Paleocene-early Eocene (Crepet and Feldman 1988)"
> Behrensmeyer et al, 1992, p. 427 University of Chicago Press.

I can't add to that, but I can say that grasses _were_ around at that time
period. There is this roadcut in ND where I find leaves, and once upon a
time thought I was also finding "twigs." Upon more thoughtful examination,
these "twigs" were grassblades, very similar to those which were alive and
growing among the nodules I was looking at there in the Bullion Creek
formation, south central ND.

Both fossil and modern grass sit amongst each other in my collection
downstairs.


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