XV.—On Rhamphodopsis, a Ptyctodont from the Middle Old Red Sandstone of Scotland

1938 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. S. Watson

In 1858 C. H. Pander described as Ptydodus a number of teeth from Upper Devonian limestones in Russia. His admirable figures of complete teeth and of sections through them established the very chimæroid structure of these bodies. Since that time similar teeth have been repeatedly described, and have served for the establishment of three genera and many species from rocks of Middle and Upper Devonian age.

Author(s):  
D. Michael Pearson ◽  
T. Stanley Westoll

SynopsisThe structure of the fishes constituting the Devonian genusCheirolepisis investigated. Articulated remains from the Scottish Old Red Sandstone and the Canadian Upper Devonian were studied and two species are recognised, the Middle DevonianC. trailliand the Upper DevonianC. canadensis.Recently described fragmentary material from Europe assigned to the genus is best regarded asincertae sedis. Cheirolepisis the earliest actinopterygian genus with extensive material. Neurocranial remains are described, with a crossopterygian-like parasphenoid. There seems to have been a mobile rostral region with several small bones between premaxilla and postrostral extending to the anterior corner of the small dermal orbit. New palatoquadrate and pectoral girdle material is described. The apparently primitive nature of the head skeleton is related to the cranial dynamics and the likely mode of life. The small scales and the elongate-fusiform body shape are a corollary of the method of swimming. The ecology of the fishes is touched upon. A taxonomic investigation of the two species was carried out but although interesting variation in the scale-row numbers came to light no changes at the specific level were deemed necessary. Revised generic and specific diagnoses are given.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Bluck ◽  
J. C. W. Cope ◽  
C. T. Scrutton

AbstractThe Devonian System was the first pre-Quaternary system to have its base established at an internationally ratified Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). The base of the System was defined at the base of the Monograptus uniformis Biozone at Klonk in Czechoslovakia (McLaren 1977). The upper boundary of the System is fixed by the base of the Carboniferous, which has been recently ratified in a GSSP at La Serre, Herault, France, at a point coincident with the first appearance of the conodont Siphonodella sulcata.Series. GSSPs have now been designated to define the bases of the Middle and Upper Devonian Series (that of the Lower Devonian being automatically defined by the System boundary).Stages. Consequent upon the selection of a Czech type section for the basal boundary stratotype of the System, the Germanic stages for the lowest parts of the Devonian were no longer appropriate and Lochkovian and Pragian stages have now been formally defined with stratotypes ratified by the I.U.G.S.Devon, the nomenclatorial type locality for the Devonian System (Sedgwick & Murchison 1839) is a region of great tectonic complexity and has not provided suitable sections on which to base international correlations. However, the rocks are frequently richly fossilferous and firm correlations can now be established with the intensively studied developments of the Devonian in Belgium and Germany.Northwards from Devon are found large tracts of the predominantly fluviatile and lacustrine facies which characterizes the Old Red Sandstone. Correlation between the marine Devonian rocks of southwest England and the


1908 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 438-440
Author(s):  
Fredk Chapman

During the last few years there have passed through my hands for determination many specimens of a twig-like fossil-plant from the highest Silurian flaggy-sandstones of Victoria. These were usually too fragmentary to afford any very decided evidence as to their affinity, although their surfaces showed a close-textured and well-defined structure, referable to that of prosenchymatous wood-cells, and the stem had a definite central vascular axis, such as was first noticed by Hugh Miller in similar fossil remains from the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland.


1992 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Leviton ◽  
Michele Aldrich

During the Late Devonian, in what is now northcentral Pennsylvania, slow moving streams meandered across the plain of the "Catskill" Delta. A varied fish fauna lived in these streams, and their remains are entombed in the ancient stream channel and floodplain sediments. In the 1830's, English railroad engineer Richard Cowling Taylor visited the coal mining community of Blossburg and remarked on the analogy between the Old Red Sandstone of England and that found near Blossburg. Not long afterwards, James Hall (1811-1898), best known for his work on Paleozoic invertebrates of New York, also visited Blossburg to clear up vexing boundary problems in the New York formations. He obtained fish scales from the red sandstones, many of which he identified as scales of Holoptychus nobilissimus, a crossopterygian fish described by Louis Agassiz in 1839. In his annual report for 1839 to the New York Legislature, Hall also took note of some large scales, which were unlike any previously described. Under pressure from the Governor, Hall, like the other survey scientists, had to submit timely reports even if studies were incomplete, and he hurriedly described the new scales, referring them to a new genus and species, Sauritolepis taylori. In his final survey report (1843). Hall dealt more fully with the new fish, renaming it Sauripteris taylori based on the fin structure, the significance of which he had not earlier recognized. The Blossburg fishes did not languish in obscurity; James DeKay referred to them in his checklist of fishes of New York, as did Charles Lyell in his 1845 Travels in North America. In 1890 John Strong Newberry placed the fish fossils in the Lower Carboniferous; he also described several new species. Hall's handling of the fossil fish he had before him and, indeed, the reasons for entering Pennsylvania in the first place, are emblematic of the way much science was practiced in the first half of the 19th century. Further, recent field work in the Blossburg area shows Hall's astuteness as a field geologist for he correctly placed the fish in the Upper Devonian, although in this region the Upper Devonian-Lower Carboniferous boundary is not well defined.


1937 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Graham-Smith ◽  
T. S. Westoll

The well-known deposits of early Upper Devonian age at Scaumenac Bay, P.Q., Canada, have yielded numerous specimens of the rather primitive Dipnoan which is now known as Scaumenacia curta (Whiteaves). During the summer of 1984 one of the authors (W. G.-S.) obtained at this locality three specimens of a very distinct new Dipnoan, characterised by an elongated head and other features. Three other specimens of this new form [No. P. 6785 in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), the anal fin-skeleton of which was figured by Woodward (1893, p. 241) under the name Scaumenacia curta (Whiteaves), and two in the Royal Scottish Museum] were subsequently recognised in museum collections, but the present account is based entirely on the three specimens mentioned above. From these it has been possible to describe almost the whole skeleton, except the endocranium, and to compare it, in some detail, with those of other primitive Dipnoi; in this comparison we have used the results of work by Porster-Cooper (1937) on Dipterus and by one of the present authors (T. S. W., nearing completion) on certain primitive Dipnoi.


1903 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-53
Author(s):  
C. A. McMahon

Since the publication of the joint paper by Mr. W. H. Hudleston and myself on “Fossils from the Hindu Khoosh,” in which the Devonian age of well-preserved fossils found in the limestone member of a series in Chitral was demonstrated, my attention has been called by Mr. T. H. Holland to the fact that the series in Chitral agrees very closely with the rocks known to the Geological Survey of India as the infra-Trias, and described, for the last time, in Hazara by Mr. C. S. Middlemiss.The Chitral series consists of three principal formations:— (1) A lower bed of conglomerate with rounded to subangular pebbles, varying greatly in size up to 3¼ inches in diameter, lying in an indurated, fine-grained matrix of slaty grit or arenaceous mudstone. The pebbles consist of limestone, slates, sandstones, and quartzites, with rounded, white quartz-pebbles, which recall the ‘eggs’ of the Blaini conglomerate of the Simla area. (2) A middle band described by my son, who made a hurried visit to the place, as red sandstone; and (3) an upper bed of grey, dark-blue, and creamcoloured fossiliferous limestone.In Hazara the system of rocks known to the Geological Survey as the infra-Trias, on account of its position unconformably below the Trias, consists in the same way of a lower conglomerate, a middle sandstone series, and an upper limestone formation. These rocks, originally referred to by Wynne and Waagen, were described in fuller detail by Middlemiss in 1896.According to Middlemiss, the conglomerate is composed of sub-angular pebbles of slates and quartzites, usually of about the size of a cricket ball, but varying from mere pebbles to larger lumps, and set in a fine purple sandy clay or shale.


1992 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Graham ◽  
Andrea James ◽  
Kenneth J. Russell

AbstractTwo detailed sections through 4 km of distal alluvium of the Upper Devonian Old Red Sandstone in the Munster Basin, southern Ireland, display a limited number of lithofacies. There is little ordering of these lithofacies on a small scale but changes in the proportions of lithofacies through time define a sequence of stages of basin evolution. The depositional environments changed progressively from sheetflood dominant, via mobile ephemeral channels and floodplains to a more fixed channel–overbank system and eventually to a coastal plain. On the basis of the sedimentary record a progressive reduction in subsidence rate with time is deduced as the main control on the evolution of the basin fill. This deduction is consistent with predictions from previously applied extensional basin models, but is insufficiently refined at present to distinguish between the different models.


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