Remarks on the sedimentary formations of New South Wales : illustrated by references to other provinces of Australasia / by W.B. Clarke.

  • William Branwhite Clarke
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the sedimentary formations of New South Wales : illustrated by references to other provinces of Australasia / by W.B. Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    44/179 page 39
    Nor docs the arrangement made of Mr. Keene’s collection agree with the actual facts in nature, for the Greta beds are not the uppermost with Marine fossils, but beds with them lie further to the east—in which Phyllotheca has occurred at Harpur’s Hill, and Glossopteris in the same way at Muree near liaymond Terrace. There is another item to be taken into account—the occurrence of fishes—one in the Newcastle seams, described and figured by Dana, viz., TJrosthenes Australis ; and many of different species in the beds above the Coal Measures, of which mention will be made hereafter. The greater part of them are fragmentary, but others are entire. Some specimens exhibit the head, others the tail or hinder portion of the body, and one jaw has been found with teeth which are not shown in the other fishes. One has within a few weeks (January, 1878) been found in shale at Balmain, near Sydney, which is shaped like Belonostomus ; but the scales are not shown and the caudal fin is too indistinct to be traced, the vertebral column and some of the ribs are better defined, but it is out of shape, and can be merely guessed at. Only half of the body was found in digging a well, and the remainder was searched for, at the desire of Mr. YVilkinson, E.G.S., and myself, and has been with difficulty discovered. Of these fishes, Palaeoniscus was recognized by Sir P. Egerton, from Parramatta and the Gibraltar Tunnel, between Nattai and Bowral, and one species assigned by that learned Icthyologist is P.antioodeus. He considers the fishes to be Permian (Q.J.G.S., xx). Professor M'Cov also has admitted that they have “a general aspect of Triassic or Permian fishes.” (“ Official Record, 1S66-7, Melbourne Eocliib., p. 169.”) Some recent writers have called in question the claims of Palaeoniscus to any Carboniferous rank. In a learned paper by Traquair—(Q.J.G.S, xxxiii, pp. 548-578. “ On the Agassizian genera Amblypterus, Ralceoniscus, Gyrolepis, and Pygopterus. By Ramsay JR. Traquair, 31.D., F.R.S.E., R.G.S., Keeper of the Natural-History Collection in the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art.” Head May, 1877)—the author, after great detail and illustration, comes to the conclusion that the fishes named are not Carboniferous but Permian. This determination does not interfere with the view I have maintained of the Palaeozoic age of some at least of our Aus- tralian Coal Measures, which is half supported by M‘Coy, wholly by Egerton, and again confirmed by Dana. Mr. W. J. Barkas, L.B.C.P.L. and M.K.C.S.E., in a paper read before the Boyal Society of New South Wales, 3 Dec., 1877—(“ On a Dental peculiarity of the Lepidosteidce”)—devoted himself to a considera- tion of the doubtful character, as he considers it, of the fishes, by Sir P. Egerton, viz., Palaeoniscus, Urosthenes, and Myriolepis.
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