Art. XII. — On the Fossil contents of the Eocene Clays of 

 the Altona Coal Shaft. 



By E. O. THIELE and F. E. GRANT. 



[Eead 12th December, 1901.] 



In a paper read by Messrs. T. S. Hall and G. B. Pritchard 

 before this Society in September, 1896/ reference was made to a. 

 bore put down at Altona Bay to prospect for coal, and a list was- 

 given of the fossils met with. Their list was drawn up from the 

 material supplied by the drill cores which was all that was then 

 obtainable, and it was necessarily imperfect. 



A shaft was subsequently sunk, and, although coal was won, 

 the works were abandoned owing to the inflow of water. The 

 waste tip from the sinking of this shaft is now available for 

 collection, but is being rapidly dissipated by the tramping of 

 stock, and by wind and rain. As the deposits passed through 

 were highly fossiliferous, it has appeared to us desirable that a 

 more adequate list of their contents should be published, as an 

 assistance to a correlation of our Marine Tertiary beds. 



The stratified deposits passed through before coal was reached,- 

 and their relation to one another, as judged from their position 

 in the spoil heap, were as follows : — - 



(1). A coarse ferruginous grit apparently represents the upper- 

 most part of the beds. In this we have failed to find any traces 

 of fossils. 



(2). A cream coloured sandy clay with nodules of yellow 

 limestone occurs next. This deposit is very full of foraminifera 

 (largely of the genus Opercidina) and contains a fair number of 

 brachiopods, but few gastropods or lamellibranchs. We have not 

 included the brachiopods in our list, but they appear to be forms 

 occurring in other typical Eocene formations. 



(3). By far the largest amount of the spoil heap consists of 

 blue and grey clays, with nodules of limestone. This material 

 is rich in fossils, and bears a close lithological resemblance to the 



1 Proc. Roy. Soc. Vic, vol. ix. (New Series), p. 218. 



