abstracts: paleontology 39 



ville sandstone. It is a series of black shales which has near Batesville 

 a thickness of about 225 feet, but which, thins rapidly in a westward 

 direction, so that at Marshall it is less than 30 feet thick and still far- 

 ther west, in the Fayetteville region, the Batesville is reported to rest 

 directly on the Boone. 



The Moorefield fauna treated in this report was obtained in the region 

 about Batesville and at Marshall and comprises 89 species and varieties. 

 Its facies is conspicuously different from those of the typical Missis- 

 si ppian faunas farther north and, as pointed out by H. S. Williams, by 

 whom its general character was first made known, it contains a number 

 of types which taken by themselves give it, in a measure, a Devonian 

 aspect. 



The Moorefield fauna is closely related to that of the lower portion of 

 the Caney shale of Oklahoma and the two are regarded as being in cor- 

 relation. At the same time the Moorefield shale has been generally 

 referred to the "St. Louis group" and this assignment is probably cor- 

 rect. G. H. G. 



PALEONTOLOGY.— The fauna of the phosphate beds of the Park City 

 formation in Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. George H. Girty. 

 Bulletin U. S. Geological Survey No. 436. Pp. 8, Pis. 7. 1911. 



It is important to note that although this report bears date of 1910, 

 its actual publication did not take place until early in the following year. 



The Park City formation, named from Park City in the Wasatch 

 Mountains of northeastern Utah, has been traced northward into 

 Idaho, from which region the collections discussed in this report were 

 largely made. Most of them came from the vicinity of Montpelier and 

 of Raymond Canyon. 



In this region the formation consists of two limestone members sepa- 

 rated by a bed of dark shale about 100 feet in thickness. It is in this 

 shale that the phosphate deposits of the Utah-Idaho-Wyoming 

 district occur. The fossils are found chiefly in a few thin limestone 

 sheets by which the shales are divided and especially in what is locally 

 known as the "Cap lime," a ledge of earthy limestone about 2 feet in 

 thickness which at Montpelier comes in near the base of the black shales 

 just above the main phosphate bed. The fauna thus far obtained con- 

 sists of 45 species and is unique in character being, like so many of our 

 western faunas, unlike the Upper Carboniferous of the Mississippi Valley 

 and comparable with the faunas of Asia and eastern Russia. In this 

 report it is provisionally placed in the Pennsylvanian, but more recent 

 data indicate that it should probably be classed as Permian. G. H. G. 



