In the month of May 1960 we received a message that a fossil pine forest had been uncovered at the bottom of a sand-pit on the farm “Zandhorst” near Helvoirt in the province of North-Brabant. Unfortunately bulldozers were got in readiness to level the excavation with the utmost speed, so that only a few hours were left for observation and sampling. As may be seen from Fig. 1, the farm is situated on coversand at the border of an ancient pleistocene river valley, the course of which could be seen as a slight depression in the landscape.