REMARKS ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS CONSIDERED AS PECU' 

 LIAR KINDS OF MARINE PLANTS.* 



I!Y 



Leo Lesquereux, Columbus, Ohio. 

 (With Plate i.) 



The fossil remains described below belong to two different geological 

 periods, and are very nnlike in tbeir appearance and composition. One 

 of these organisms, the more interesting (Fig. 1, l«), is like a long tlexn- 

 ous tnbular stem embedded in a large piece of hard compact gray lime- 

 stone, the label attached to the specimen indicating the locality as 

 <' Upper Helderberg limestone, Sandusky, Oliio." The others are of 

 much larger size, either (Figs. 2, 3) cylindrical fragments traced in relief 

 npon gray, hard, j-ellowish sandy shale, of the so-called Erie shiile for- 

 mation, exposed in cliffs bordering Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio, 

 and referred by Da Newberry to the Portage Gronp of the Chemang,t or 

 (Figs. 4-9) short, oval, utricular bodies, rounded at one end, bilobate at 

 the other, mostly seen in relief, entirely destitute of any kind of roots, 

 seemingly dropped here and there upon large flattened pebbles or len- 

 ticular masses of argillaceous iron ore, locally distributed in the shale. 

 Though all are evidently of the samefacies and character they are totally 

 independent, more or less distant from each other, abnormal in form 

 and position, and without recognized afBnity to any kind of living plants 

 or animals. They belong to that class of ill-defined fossil remains fitly 

 called problematic organisms by Saporta, and therefore their nature is 

 differently regarded by paleobotanists. By some they are regarded 

 as the remains of marine plants of old types that have been gradually 

 effaced and are now extinct, like those for example which have been 

 generally described as Fucoids; others, refusing to find in tbeni any 

 trace of vegetable nature, even of organization, regard them as the 

 result of mere mechanical mouldings produced by the movement of 

 water or the tracks or burrows of different kinds of animals upon soft 

 muddy snrfiices, either near the shore or at the bottom of the sea. 



Though apparently of little importance to science, the discussion of 

 the true nature of these fossil remains has been and is still pursued 

 with persistence by some of the Lighest authorities in vegetable pale- 

 ontology, and has given occasion to the publication of very creditable 

 and conscientious memoirs; those of Saporta, for example, one upon 

 the fossil Algfe,! another upon the problematic organisms of the an- 



* This paper was preparerl and submitted for piiblicati m some m-mtlis hcfore tlie 

 death of the author— E'litor. 



t Report of the Geoh)«Tienl Survey of Oliio, vol. i, P.ut i, Ge(>lo>?y, 187:], p. 163. 

 J A propos des Alfriies f.issiles. par Ic Marquis de Saporta. Paris, 1662. 



Proceedings Niitional Museum, Vol. XIII— Xo. 792. 5 



