Note 121 — THE PLATEAU, OR TABLE-LAND, OF CAXAMARCA, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA, AND THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, From the Ridge of the Andes.
Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn translation
p. 403—“At the elevation of nearly 12,800 feet above the sea, we found marine fossils.”
See my Essai géognostique sur le Gisement des Roches, 1823, p. 236; and for the first zoological determination of the fossils contained in the cretaceous formation of the Andes chain, see Leopold de Buch, Pétrifications recueillies en Amérique par Alex. de Humboldt et Charles Degenhardt, 1839 (in fol.), pp. 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 18, 22. Pentland found 429fossil shells of the Silurian formation in Bolivia, and on the Nevado of Antakana at the elevation of 17,480 feet. (See Mary Somerville’s Physical Geography, 1849, vol. i. p. 185.)