KINDERHOOK FAUNAL STUDIES. I. THE FAUNA 

 OF THE VERMICULAR SANDSTONE AT NORTH- 

 VIEW, WEBSTER COUNTY, MISSOURI.* 



Stuart Weller. 



The faunas of the Kiuderhook formations in the Mississippi 

 Valley have long been neglected. Lying as they do on the 

 border line between the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, 

 they present problems of extreme interest to the student of 

 paleontologic geology. The Kinderhook epoch was a time of 

 transition, a period of change which ushered in the long 

 period of quiet which constituted the Osage epoch of Missis- 

 sippian time.f Very naturally, because of the progressive 

 changes in the physical conditions of the time, the Kinder- 

 hook fauna is more or less diverse in its characters. It is not 

 one single fauna, but is constituted of many fauuulae, each 

 one of which is more or less restricted both in time and 

 place. 



In order to work out the relationships existing between the 

 various local assemblages or local societies of organisms which 

 were living during Kinderhook time in the present Mississippi 

 valley, it is our purpose to make a careful study of as many 

 separate ones of these fossil societies as can be secured. In 

 each one of these studies the fossils from a single horizon at a 

 single locality will be discussed, that is, those organisms which 

 we know actuallv lived together and formed a social com- 

 munity. All the species, both the old ones and those recog- 

 nized for the first time, will be described and illustrated as 

 fully as possible, so that direct comparisons between the 

 faunal groups may be made by the student without his having 

 to undertake a laborious investigation through many scattered 



* Presented by title to The Academy of Science of St. Louis, April 3, 1899. 

 t See Stuart Weller, Classification of the Mississippian Series. Jour. 

 Geol. 6: 303-3U. (1898). 



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