EVIDENCES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE WALCOTT, 245 



Attention is called to the close relationship between the great Cam- 

 brian section of the Province of Shantung, China, and the Cordil- 

 leran sections of North America. The thickness of the strata is very 

 much less, but the general character and stratigraphic succession of 

 the Cambrian faunas is very much the same. This relationship is 

 further verified by the association of genera and species as shown by 

 my subsequent study of the Cambrian faunas of China. 



THE CAMBRI.^N FAUNAS OF CHINA.' 



^Vlien looking over the descriptions of China by Baron Ferdinand 

 von Richthofen - and their contained Cambrian fossils described by 

 Dr. W. Dames ^ from Liautung, and Dr. Emanuel Kayser,* I was 

 impressed with the necessity of having the stratigraphic sections 

 studied in detail, and extensive collections of fossils made, in order 

 that comparisons of value might be instituted between the Cambrian 

 sections and faunas of the western portion of North America and the 

 Paleozoic sections and their contained faunas in eastern Asia. This 

 project was held in abeyance 18 years, until in 1907 an expedition 

 was sent by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, under the 

 charge of Dr. Bailey Willis and his associate geologist, Mr. Eliot 

 Blackwelder, resulting in the acquisition of large and interesting 

 collections, of which I have made a careful stud}^, comparing them 

 with other collections from abroad, which I also had the opportunity 

 to examine. 



The chief results obtained from the study of the Chinese collec- 

 tions were the discovery of portions of the upper part of the Lower 

 Cambrian fauna and a great development of a Middle Cambrian 

 fauna of the same general character as that of the Cordilleran 

 province of western North America ; also an Upper Cambrian fauna 

 comparable with that of the Cordilleran province and the upper 

 Mississippi province of the United States. The fauna of the upper 

 zone of the Lower Cambrian was found to be of the same general 

 type as that of the Cambrian fauna of the Salt Range of India, and 

 we were thus enabled definitely to locate the faunal horizons in 

 India which had been referred to Upper Cambrian and post- 

 Cambrian formations. 



Another important discovery was that of the occurrence in the 

 Middle Cambrian of China of a fauna comparable with that of the 

 Middle Cambrian of Mount Stephen, British Columbia (pp. 216, 

 247), and the southern extension of the same fauna in the Middle 

 Cambrian of Idaho, Utah, and Nevada in the United States. 



1 Research in China, Carnegie Inst, of Washington, Pub. No. 54, 1913, Walcott : The 

 Cambrian Faunas of China. 



2 China, 1882, vol. 2. 



3 Idem, 1883, vol. 4, pp. 1-33. 

 * Idem, pp. 34-36. 



