iiilLIBRARY 





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THE OTTAWA t(ATURALIST. 



Vol. XVII. OTTAWA, JULY, 1903. No. \. 



DESCRIPTION OF A SPECIES OF CARDIOCERAS FROM 

 THE CROWS NEST COAL FIELDS. 



By J. F. Whiteaves. 



The genus Cardiocenis of Neumayr and Uhlig- consists of a 

 few species of Ammonites with compressed involute whorls, a 

 crenulated keel, and acute radiating ribs, — that were formerly 

 referred to the Amalthei of Von Buch, and that have hitherto been 

 regarded as peculiar to the Callovien and Oxfordien subdivisions 

 of the European Upper Jurassic. It was first described in the 

 twenty-seventh volume of the "Palaeontographica," published at 

 Cassel in 1881. 



In the second volume of the " Handbuch der Palaeontologie" 

 {1881-85), Zittel regards Cardioceras as closely related to the 

 Liassic genus Amaltheus, but Hyatt, in his latest and much more 

 recent classification of the Ammonites in Eastman's translation of 

 Zittel's Text-book of Palaeontology (1900), places these two 

 genera in diff"erent families, and says that '• the young are very 

 distinct." 



One of the commonest and best known species of Cardioceras 

 is the fossil originally described by James Sowerby in 181 3 

 (Mineral Conchology, vol. i.) as Ammonites cordaius, which is 

 abundant in the Oxfordien of England, France, Switzerland, and 

 Russia. Of this species there are several good specimens in the 

 Museum of the Geological Survey, that were collected by the 

 writer in 1859 or i860, from the Oxford Clay and Coral Rag near 

 Oxford, England. 



The genus has not previously been recognized in rocks of any 

 age on the North American continent, but the Ammonites cordi- 



