340 AUSTRALIAN, SOUTH AFRICAN, AND INDIAN COAL-MEASURES, 



is about leaving the stage and Tmniopteris has already appeared^ 

 must, one would suppose, correspond in position more or less to 

 the hiatus to which I have already referred between the Newcastle 

 and the Clarence River series. 



The Ipswich or Brisbane River coal measures correspond with- 

 out doubt to the latter (Narrabeen and Clarence River), containing 

 as they do Tmnioiiteris Daintreei, Cyclopteris cuneata, Tliinnfeldia 

 odontopteroides^ Alethopteris Australis, ifec. 



But in Queensland this formation seems to be continuous with 

 the Cretaceo-jurassic, which we have already met with on the right 

 bank of the DarliDg, but which is of vast extent a little further 

 north. 



There appears to be no break in the continuity of the Ipswich 

 beds with the great Rolling Downs formation, " which contains 

 a marine fauna (and occasionally freshwater) representing the 

 migration of many species which in Europe date from Rhsetic to 

 Cretaceous, but which cannot be quoted as arguing a strict con- 

 temporaneity of life." (Jack, l.c, p. 67.) 



It is not difficult to understand the survival of Triassic forms 

 in these regions, since many such remain to this day. But it is 

 very difficult to imagine that a large number of fossils of Cretaceous 

 character should have appeared in the southern hemisphere so far 

 in advance of the northern as to alter the character of a true 

 Jurassic fauna. 



The mode in which these fossils chiefly occur, in nodules lying upon 

 the general surface of the ground, seems to suggest that a consider- 

 able erosion of the softer portion of the deposits, has carried away 

 all the mass which once overlaid the present surface, and has left 

 behind it the hard and heavy concretions which had formed around 

 the organic remains of many periods in succession, so that Cre 

 taceous fossils from the highest and first denuded beds are mingled 

 with Jurassic forms from the lower and last denuded. Otherwise 

 we must inevitably be drawn to the conclusion that the TcBniop- 

 teris flora extended its duration into a period contemporaneous 

 with (at least) the Lower Cretaceous in the Northern Hemis- 

 phere. This would bring the Hawkesbury beds with their 



