Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh http://journals.cambridge.org/TRE Additional services for Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here XXVIII.—On the Distribution of Fossil Fish-remains in the Carboniferous Rocks of the Edinburgh District Ramsay H. Traquair Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh / Volume 40 / Issue 03 / January 1905, pp 687 - 707 DOI: 10.1017/S0080456800034761, Published online: 06 July 2012 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0080456800034761 How to cite this article: Ramsay H. Traquair (1905). XXVIII.—On the Distribution of Fossil Fish-remains in the Carboniferous Rocks of the Edinburgh District. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 40, pp 687-707 doi:10.1017/S0080456800034761 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/TRE, IP address: 129.128.216.34 on 13 Mar 2015 ( G87 XXVIII.—On tlic Distribution of Fossil Fish-ronaius in, iJic Corboiufrroifs Hocks of the EJinbimjh District. By RAMSAY H. TKAOUAIR, II.D., LL.D., F.R.S., Keeper of the Natural History Collection in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. (With Two Plates.) (Read July 1. 1901. Given in for publication May 6. 1903. Issued separately, October 16, 1903.) The district in which the city of Edinburgh is situated was one of the first in Britain from which fish-remains of Carboniferous age were collected, ft is now sixty-seven years ago since AGASSIZ described the fossil fishes which were discovered by Lord GREENOCK at Wardie. Dr HIBBERT at Burdiehouse, and Professor JAMESON at Burnt- island. The list given from this region in the " Tableau Geiiexale " at the beginning of the Poissons Fossiles comprises twenty-nine names, of which eight were nominee nudct and are not now verifiable, the original specimens being lost ; one, Diplod us minutus, was described, but insufficiently, and the original is also lost ; six are synonyms of others in the list ; leaving fourteen good species, of which one, Ptychacanthus sublsevis, is a synonym of a Selachian spine (Tristychivs arcuatus), described and figured from the Glasgow district. The list given by SALTER in the Appendix to the " Geology of the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh" (Mem. GeoL Survey, Scotland, Sheet 32, 1861) is in the main a reproduc- tion of that in the Poissons Fossiles, though it contains some additional species. Thirty- one names are given, of which four are of genera only ; but of the rest, only eleven can be said to represent species which will " stand " at the present time. The richness in fishes of the Carboniferous rocks of the Edinburgh district had yet to be realised. In 1890,# after many years' work, I published a List of the Fossil Dipnoi and Ganoidei of Fife and the Lothians, in which those of the Upper Old Eed Sandstone were also included. Fifty species were here enumerated, and of these forty will stand as " good " for the district included in Sheet 32, with which we have to do in the present paper. Adding the Selachian form then omitted, and bringing the whole list up to date, we find that the Carboniferous Fish-fauna of the district in question, accord- ing to present knowledge, numbers no less than eighty-seven named species. One feature of special interest in Scottish Carboniferous Palaeontology is the oppor- tunity afforded of comparing the plants and animals which lived under similar estuarine conditions during the deposition of the Lower and Upper divisions of the system respec- tively. This cannot be so readily done in England or Ireland, where the Upper Carboniferous rocks are mainly of " estuarine " or " lagoon " formation, and the Lower almost as exclusively marine in their origin, except in the extreme north. The case is, i* » * Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xvii. 1890, pp. 385-400. TRANS. ROY SOC. EDIN., VOL. XL. PART III. (NO. 28). 5 i 688 DE RAMSAY H. TRAQUAIR ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOSSIL FISH-REMAINS however, different in Scotland, where the strata below the Millstone Grit, though con- taining intercalated beds of marine limestone, are largely similar to those of the over- lying Coal Measures in their lithological character, and in the facies of their imbedded organic remains. This is a matter of great importance in connection with the question of Life-Zones in the Carboniferous system which has for some time back been engaging # the attention of British geologists. Mr KIDSTON has pointed out the dissimilarities between the Upper and Lower Carboniferous land flora in Great Britain, and I have on more than one occasion t drawn attention to the fact that different assemblages of estuarine fishes characterise the two great divisions of the strata of this period in our island. Before proceeding with the enumeration of genera and species from the various horizons, it is, however, necessary to lay before the reader a general view of the relations of the strata of the Carboniferous area of the district in question, namely, that embraced 1 ,:• in Sheet 32 of the Ordnance and Geological Surveys of Scotland. For that purpose I I; 15 applied to the Director of the Geological Survey in Edinburgh, and received from him the general section of the Carboniferous rocks of the Lothians given in Plate I., and which was drawn up by Dr B. N. PEACH, F.E.S. One thing which strikes the eye at the first glance is the small comparative thick- ness of the Upper Carboniferous series in this section, the Coal Measures with the Mill- stone Grit occupying only about 1500 feet, while the subjacent Lower Carboniferous attains a thickness of at least 7000 feet, and is probably still thicker in its lower part than here represented. The Lower Carboniferous division commences above with the so-called u Carbonifer- ous Limestone Series," which, however, consists principally of sandstones, shales, fire- clays, ironstones, and coal-seams, some of the latter being of great economic value. Intercalated among these towards the top, and again towards the bottom of the series, are beds of marine limestone ; hence the threefold subdivision into Upper Limestone, Edge Coals, and Lower Limestones—the name of the middle group being derived from the circumstance that at Drum and Niddrie, in Midlothian, these strata are tilted up on " edge," so as in fact to be nearly vertical. Below the Carboniferous Limestone Series comes the thickest part of the Lower Carboniferous division in this region; namely, the " Calciferous Sandstones" of MACLAREN, the subordinate members of which are noted in the section, and will be dealt with in succession further on. This series is in the Edinburgh district character- ised by a rarity of " marine " beds, the principal limestone, that of Burdiehouse, being also of estuarine origin, like the sandstones, shales, and ironstones which constitute the mass of the rocks here included. Most geologists are agreed that the Calciferous Sand- stones of Scotland represent the lower portion of the ''Carboniferous Limestone "of England and Ireland, though deposited under very different conditions. * Proc. Boy. Phijs. Soc. E<lin,, vol. xii. 1893, p. 190 et seq. t Loc. cit.9 p. 386, 387. Also, Geol. Mag. (3), vol. i. 1884, p. 121. IN THE CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS OF THE EDINBURGH DISTRICT. 689 The species noted in the following lists are all in the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, or in my private collection, with the exception of a few from the marine beds K v;;;L ' of the Lower Limestone ijroup, which are. in the collection of the Geological Survey *viL^ ' ^ of Scotland. For leave to include the latter I have to record my thanks to the Director >..:- of the Survey, Mr J. ,1. H. TEALL, F.R.S. '^^(Q LISTS OF SPECIES. Li •"* -•'•si u.c TJB& CALCIFEROUS SANDSTONE SERIES. •.f.:Li;ein^; Beds below tJw Horizon of the Craigleith and Granton Sandstones, , / ••" No fish-remains whatever have been found in the Craiqmillar or Red Sandstone ,,~~^ Group, which seems to stand on the border-line between the Lower Carboniferous and "" u"AJ---t the Upper Old Eed. Nor have any occurred in the sandstones which in this district are reckoned by the Geological Survey to the last-named formation (Upper (Jld Red). : '!Lp^u«cii- Ballaqan Beds.—Scales referable to Rhizodus, alon^ with a few of undeterminable «*-> lik^L- palaeoniscid type, were found in 1K98 by Air D. TAIT, of the Geological Survey, in !/•• •-' fe.Ci* rocks exposed during excavations for the foundations of the new Scotsman Offices at i>r in RttX j the North Bridge, and are now in the collection of the Survey. ; Arthur Seat Group.—A bed of stratified ash underlying basalt at St Anthony's _ \i I,LTI3 Chapel has long been known to contain remains of fishes as well as of plants. In HUGH 'v.afc.^^^ MILLER'S Testimony of the Rocks mention is made of the finding there of a tooth of a v,* *--..frC-^ " carboniferous Holoptychius " (=Rkizod-us), by the late Dr MACBAIN ; and in the ->rw i^ Geological Survey Memoir, on Sheet S'2 (1861), reference is also made to the occurrence sca es °^ ' l of Rhizodus" in the same bed. The late Mr DAVID GRIEVE, of Edinburgh, had a considerable collection of these remains, but they were unfortunately lost sight of after his death; and as none have been collected since, it is not possible to give a critically determined list of them. ;;r.^ Abbey Hill Shales.—The Arthur Seat beds are overlaid by what are termed the ;•*-* -0" i^ '' Abbey Hill Shales, from which scales of Eurynotus and Rkadinichthys, found in j # :'V* "\^\ boring for water at Abbeyhill, were recorded by Mr JOHN HENDERSON in 1880.