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XIV.—On Fossil Fish-remains collected by J. S. Flett, M.A., D.Sc., from the Old Red Sandstone of Shetland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

Extract

Little has hitherto been known about the animal remains of the Old Red Sandstone of Shetland. In 1858 Sir Roderick Murchison mentioned the occurrence, in flaggy beds in the environs of Lerwick, of “the same little Crustacean (the Estheria) which occurs at Thurso and Kirkwall.” Heddle in 1878 refers to the occurrence of fish-remains in the rocks of the same region in the following terms:—“Specimens of small fishes, apparently acanthoides, were shown the writer; these were imbedded in a brown fine-grained muddy sandstone; they were stated to occur in a quarry north of Gardie in Bressay.” Again, in the same year, Sir A. Geikie, in his well-known paper on the “Old Red Sandstone of Western Europe,” states that Dr HEDDLE “informs me that he was shown some ichthyolites (Coccosteus, etc.) in Bressay, which he was assured had been found among the flagstones of that island.” Unfortunately it does not appear that any description of these specimens has ever been published, nor, so far as I am aware, is their present whereabouts known.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1909

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References

page 321 note * Quar. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xv., 1858, p. 413.

page 321 note † “On the Geognosy of Scotland. The Mainland of Shetland,” Mineralog. Mag., vol. ii., No. 11, Dec. 1878, p. 156, footnote.

page 321 note ‡ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxviii., 1878, p. 418.

page 323 note * See the author's paper on the “Structure and Classification of the Asterolepidæ” in Ann. and Mag. Nat. History [6], vol. ii. (1888), pp. 485–503. Also in “Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone,” pt. ii. No. 1, Palæontographical Society, 1894.

page 324 note * Proc. American Phil. Soc., vol. xx. (1883), pp. 664–666, with figure.

page 324 note * Palœozoic Fishes of North America (Washington, 1889), pp. 92–95, pi. xvii. figs. 1–4.

page 325 note * American Geologist, vol. vi. (1890), pp. 255–258.

page 326 note * Proc. Am. States National Museum, vol. xiv. (1891), pp. 447–463.

page 326 note † Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., vol. xxx. (1892), pp. 221–229, pls. vii. and viii.

page 326 note ‡ Geol. Mag. (3), vol. ix., 1892, pp. 233–235.

page 326 note § It will also be remembered that Agasaiz himself was deceived by the corresponding element in Bothriolepis major, from the north of Scotland, which he figured, under the name of Placothorax paradoxus, as “un type nouveau de la famille des Céphalaspides.” (Poiss. Foss. vieux grès rouge, p. 134, tab. 30 a, figs. 22, 23.)

page 327 note * Verh. naturh. Verein, preuss. Rheinl., vol. xliii. (1886), pp. 55–57, with two figures.