164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 75 



width of about 20 miles (32.2 km.) but they may be found in the 

 future west of fhe Continental Divide in the drainage areas of the 

 Blaeberry, Bush and other rivers to the north-northwest, but my pres- 

 ent impression is that they were limited to about where we now know 

 them. The greatest thickness of sedimentation was on the line of the 

 broad syncline of the Ottertail Range, where the strata referred to 

 the Goodsir formation form a high mountain ridge that rests in a 

 synclinal trough of the Ottertail limestone, which is superjacent to 

 the Chancellor shales. The area of the formations of the Goodsir 

 Trough is outlined by faults, both on the east and west, that serve 

 to delimit roughly the compressed lateral boinidaries of the trough. 

 The northern extension of this trough has not been traced beyond 

 the V an Horn Range, and nothing was seen of its included formations 

 or their contained faunules about the headwaters of the Saskatchewan 

 River (B, pi. 25), 50 miles (80.5 km.) north of the Kicking Horse 

 Canyon at Ottertail. To the south-southeast of the Ottertail Range, 

 in the Vermilion and ]\Iitchell Ranges, a great thickness of thin- 

 bedded limestones with shaly partings appears to represent the Good- 

 sir and Ottertail formations ; the Chancellor shales extend along the 

 southwestern side of the Ottertail, Vermilion, and Mitchell Ranges ; 

 and the broad canyon valleys of the Beaverfoot and Kootenay Rivers 

 were largely eroded in the shales of the Chancellor and the readily 

 broken down Ottertail formation. 



In places these Goodsir Trough shales and limestones rise nearly 

 to the summit of the northeastern side of the Beaverfoot-Brisco- 

 Stanford Range, and are in contact with the Silurian, Brisco and 

 Beaverfoot limestones of the Beaverfoot Trough along the line of 

 the great Kootenay fault which now outlines the contact between 

 the formations deposited in the two Troughs. 



No fossils have been reported from the Goodsir, Ottertail. or 

 Chancellor formations of the Beaverfoot-Kootenay River area that 

 are upturned against the east-northeast side of the Beaverfoot-Brisco- 

 Stanford Range, but as soon as the great Kootenay fault is crossed 

 to the strata on the southwest side of the fault, fossils are abundant 

 in the Silurian, Brisco and Beaverfoot; Ordovician (Canadian), 

 Glenogle and Sarbach ; Ozarkian, Mons ; and Upper Cambrian, 

 Sabine formations. Almost in a step one passes from a singularly 

 barren series of shales and limestones to a record of abundant and 

 varied marine life. This indicates that the seaway of the Goodsir 

 Trough had little direct connection with the great Cordilleran sea- 

 ways and their faunas, while the Beaverfoot Trough, in its time, was 



