A middle Eocene Goniopteris 
EDWARD W. BERRY 
(WITH PLATE 22) 
The following new species, based upon rather extensive and 
well preserved material from the middle Eocene of our southern 
states, seems worthy of special notice. It is referred to the poly- 
podiaceous genus Goniopteris Presl, as amended, and it is hoped 
that the present note will have some influence with students of 
living ferns in hastening the much to be desired segregation of the 
unwieldy and more or less unnatural genus Dryopteris, in which 
Gomiopteris is often included. 
Goniopteris claiborniana sp. nov. 
Fronds of large size, probably bipinnate, with a stout promi- 
nently winged rachis. Pinnae alternate to subopposite, often 
prevailingly subopposite. Pinnae shortly stipitate, of large size, 
linear-lanceolate i in ae) averaging between I0 cm. and 15 cm. 
in length by 1.5-3.5 cm. in maximum width, tapering to an ex- 
Pinnae sometimes but slightly pinnatifid with short, conical 
segments, the sinuses extending only one seventh of the distance 
to the stipe; sometimes deeply pinnatifid, the sinuses extending 
about half way to the stipe. Basal proximal pinnule often free 
and entire. 
The three types of marginal lobulation are correlated with 
three types of venation, although naturally the three are con- 
nected by every intermediate gradation. These types will be 
described after describing what I have called the normal type. 
This is the type that agrees in its more important particulars with 
that type familiar in Tertiary ferns and referred by paleobotanists 
to the more or less interrelated and synonymous genera Lastrea, 
Phegopteris and Goniopteris. It is a type met with in modern, 
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