XVI.—Notes on the Mountain Limestone and Lower Carboniferous Rocks of the Fifeshire Coast from Burntisland to St Andrews

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this paper I shall first refer to the circumstances under which the following observations were made.I had gone in the autumn of 1856 for a few weeks to Elie on the Fife coast, and was induced, as a means of relaxation and exercise in the open air, to pay some attention to the geology of the neighbourhood, resuming for a brief interval what was once a favourite pursuit. About a mile to the east of the village, I found a stratum well deserving attention—a thin bed of limestone—dipping inland a little beyond the cliff on which stands the ruined Castle of Ardross. The fossil shells which it contained were of unusual form, and beautifully preserved; there were fish remains of two or three species, and a small group of crustaceans still more remarkable. Among the fish I thought I could detect the large scales of an Irish species—the Holoptychius Portlockii—and among the crustaceans there were the valves of Dithyrocaris, a genus particularly characteristic of the Irish beds. At once the question arose whether these fossils might not serve as links connecting this Ardross bed with the Irish series. The point was of the more importance, that our leading geologists had been differing widely as to the true position of our Scottish coal strata in the geological scale. The lamented Professor Edward Forbes had assigned them a place comparatively high, while Sir Roderick Murchison, with surer judgment, had taken the opposite view and put them beneath the Newcastle coal-field.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: