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XXVIII.—On the Presence of Tetrads of Resistant Spores in the Tissue of Sporocarpon furcatum Dawson from the Upper Devonian of America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

R. Kidston
Affiliation:
Barker Professor of Cryptogamic Botany in the University of Manchester.
W. H. Lang
Affiliation:
Barker Professor of Cryptogamic Botany in the University of Manchester.

Extract

The deposits of the Devonian period over a large area in the interior of North America to the south of the great lakes are known to be wholly of marine type and to have continued those of the Silurian period. They were formed in a great gulf open to the south. Along the western border of this gulf shore-deposits and, during Upper Devonian times, deposits of Old Red Sandstone type were accumulated, while in the middle of the gulf the resulting rocks were limestones and shales. In Ohio, following on a narrow band of what is regarded as Oriskany Sandstone (Lower Devonian), the Corniferous limestone and some local representatives of the Hamilton formation represent the Middle Devonian. Above this comes a great mass of black shale, which here represents the whole Upper Devonian and may continue up into black shales of the Lower Carboniferous. A black shale at the base of the Upper Devonian rocks has an extensive range in the central region of North America, being represented by the Huron shale in Canada and the Genessee shale in New York. Drifted land plants from the coast of the gulf, or from islands in it, have been found in the black shale and also in the underlying Corniferous limestone, and some other fossils are commonly spoken of as Algæ but have afforded little or no botanical information.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1925

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References

page 597 note * Newberry, , Geol. Surv. Ohio, vol. i, pp. 106, 147, 154Google Scholar, and Journ. of Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. xii, p. 50Google Scholar.

page 597 note † Dawson, , Canad. Rec. of Science, vol. iii, No. 3 (1888), pp. 137140Google Scholar. [A further description of this plant with figures showing the tetrads described in this memoir was published in 1923 by White and Stadnichenko (“Some Mother Plants of Petroleum in the Devonian Black Shules”) in Economic Geology, vol. xviii, pp. 238252Google Scholar. In this paper, which has only now been seen, the name Foerstia ohionensis is given to the plant.—W. H. L., Sept. 1924.]

page 597 note ‡ Ibid., p. 138.

page 598 note * Dawson, loc. cit., p. 139.

page 601 note * Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. lii, pp. 842–3Google Scholar.