DESCRIPTION OF A COLLECTION OF KOOTANIE 

 PLANTS FROM THE GREAT FALLS COAL FIELD OF 

 MONTANA 1 



By F. H. KNOWLTON 



The present paper is based on a small collection of fossil plants 

 obtained during the season of 1906 by Mr. Cassius A. Fisher, of the 

 U. S. Geological Survey, while engaged in economic work on the 

 coals of the Great Falls coal field and adjacent areas in north-central 

 Montana. While not of great extent, this collection contains a num- 

 ber of very interesting things, among them a species of the genus 

 Protorhipis, which has not previously been found in this country. 

 There are also a number of species not before noted in the Kootanie 

 of the United States, although present in the Canadian beds of this 

 age, as well as several believed to be new to science. 



Before passing to an enumeration of the plants, a brief review 

 of previous collections of Kootanie plants may be of interest. The 

 name Kootanie Series, so given from a tribe of Indians who formerly 

 hunted in the country in which it occurs, was proposed in 1885 by 

 Dr. George M. Dawson for a series of sandstones interbedded with 

 shales and shaly sandstones, including occasional beds of con- 

 glomerate and a zone containing coal seams. The original area, 

 which was about 140 miles in length and 40 miles in extreme breadth, 

 is in the Rocky Mountain region of Alberta north of the forty-ninth 

 parallel and. south of the Bow River. The plants collected in these 

 beds were reported on by Sir William Dawson, 2 who enumerated 

 twenty-two forms with new species in the genera Asplenium, Za- 

 mites, Ginkgo, and Taonurus. 



In the course of an examination of the Great Falls coal field, the 

 late Dr. J. S. Newberry obtained fossil-plant data which, in 1887, 

 enabled him to announce 3 that "these plants prove beyond ques- 

 tion that the Great Falls coal basin is of the same age as those that 

 have been described north of the boundary line by Dr. George M. 

 Dawson, in what he has designated as the Kootanie series." 



1 Published by permission of the Chief Geologist of the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey. 

 - Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, vol. 4, 1885, sec. iv, pp. 5-10, pis. i, 11. 

 3 School of Mines Quarterly, vol. 8, July, 1887, p. 329. 



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