1911.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 17 



NEW CYCADS AND CONIFERS FROM THE TRIAS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



BY AMOS P. BROWN. 



The Museum of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 

 has recently received a number of plant fossils from the Trias of Penn- 

 sylvania, the gift of Mr. George Velder, of Bucks County. They come 

 from a small local quarry, worked from time to time to supply stone for 

 road metal. The quarry is located in the Norristown Shales of Lyman, 1 

 the lowermost member of his " New Red," with which is to be correlated 

 the Stockton of Kummel. 2 The stone in which the impressions are found 

 is a thin-bedded, dark, shaly sandstone, with numerous small mica 

 flakes, and sufficiently fine-grained to take a good impression of the 

 plants. These are in such good condition that they were evidently 

 imbedded in the mud when fresh; the flexuous character of some of 

 the species is perfectly reproduced, indicating that the mud in which 

 the impressions were made was very soft. In some of these impressions 

 a coaly deposit has replaced the cellulose; in others the impression 

 shows a rusty deposit, indicating that a certain amount of pyrites was 

 reduced by the vegetable matter after the plant was imbedded, which 

 has become oxidized to limonite, as the rock has been brought to the 

 surface again by erosion. On the specimens thus far studied, two 

 species of Cycadales and four Coniferae are represented, of which four 

 are new to science, two Cycadaceae and two Pinaceae. 



Class CYCADALES. 

 Family CYCADACEA. 

 Podozamites formosus sp. now Plate I. 



Rachis rather stout, varying in diameter from 5 mm. to 2.5 mm. in a 

 length of 450 mm., marked near the edges of the upper side by the 

 scars of attachment of the leaflets, of which there are 35 on each side 

 in this distance of 450 mm. Leaflets rather distantly spaced on the 

 rachis, extending about at right angles to it, and the basal leaflets 

 somewhat reflexed ; alternate to sub-opposite, nearly sessile ; attached 



1 Summary Final Report, Geol. Surv. Pa., Ill, Part 2, 1895. 

 1 Ann. Rep. State Geol. Surv. New Jersey, 1896. 



2 



