Stratigraphical Features. 



BY B. DUNSTAN. 



DENMARK HILL, IPSWICH. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



THE first discovery of fossil insects in the Ipswich Coal Measures 

 is to be credited to Mr. T. H. Simmonds, of Brisbane, who, in 1890, 

 found at Denmark Hill the specimens described by Messrs. Etheridge 

 and Olliff in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South 

 Wales.* The fossils described include Mesostigmodera typica, E. and 

 O., (?) Glochinorrhynchussp., (?) Hydrophilidse, (?) Lampyridse, and 

 Hemiptera. Subsequently Handlirschf renamed the (/) Glochi- 

 norrhynchus as Etheridgea australis, another Rhynchophorous beetle 

 as Pseudorhynchopliora Olliffi, and the two specimens of Hydro- 

 philidse as Ademosyne major and A. minor respectively. Nine years 

 later the writer, in examining the rocks at Denmark Hill, came across 

 a bed containing abundance of fossil flora, several species of insects, 

 and a number of Estheria mangaliensis. The fossil insects obtained 

 from this bed at that time is the collection which Mr. Tillyard 

 generously offered to describe. This bed was thought at first to be 

 the one from which Mr. Simmonds collected his specimens, but some 

 insect fragments, in the form of elytra, were recently found at a 

 lower horizon in the same locality, so evidently the fossils were not 

 limited to the one bed. 



This fossil insect bed, which is about six inches thick, contains 

 .an abundant flora made up principally of the fern Thinnfeldia, and 

 is closely associated with other similar beds rich in plant remains, 

 the horizon being near the top of the Ipswich Coal Measures. 



Coal-seams occur both above and below the geological horizon 

 of the quarry, and only fifty feet of strata separate the fossil beds 

 from the Aberdare coal-seam above, with the Bluff seam occurring 

 about the same distance below. 



* The Mesozoic and Tertiary Insects of New South Wales [and Queensland] by R. Etheridgc* 

 and A. Sidney Olliff. Palaeontology No. 7, pp. 9, 22, with 2 plates, 4to. By Auth. 1890. 



t Die Fossilen Insekten und die Phylogenie der rezenten Formen. Leipzig, 1908, pp. 1430. 

 Atlas of 51 plates. 4to (Engelmann). 



