if?' Vernon, On the occurrence of Schizoneura paradoxa, etc. 401 



On the occurrence of Schizoneura paradocca, Schimper and 

 Mougeot, in the Bunter of Nottingham. By R. D. Vernon, 

 B.Sc, 1851 Exhibition Research Scholar, and Advanced Student 

 Exhibitioner of Emmanuel College. (Communicated by Mr E. A. 

 Newell Arber.) 



[Read 7 February 1910.] 



From the Eugiish Trias recorded fossils are extremely rare and 

 appear to be restricted to the Upper or Keuper division. The 

 Lower Trias has hitherto yielded, so far as I am aware, only 

 derived fossils which are contained in the constituent pebbles of 

 the middle or " Pebble Bed " subdivision of the Bunter. The 

 discovery of fossil plant-remains from the Bunter of Nottingham 

 is thus of some general interest, for they appear to be the first 

 contemporaneous fossils from the Bunter of England. Equise- 

 taceous pith casts of doubtful attribution were the first specimens 

 obtained ; they were provisionally determined as Equisetites sp., 

 and are so mentioned in the recently published Geological Survey 

 Memoir on the Nottingham district*. Subsequent collecting has 

 yielded a large number of fragmentary plant-remains including 

 not only pith casts but also leaves, stems, and roots ; occasionally 

 specimens are found showing two or more organs still in organic 

 connection. All the fossils may be referred to Schizoneura para- 

 doxa, S. and M., and there is reason to believe that they originally 

 grew on the spot where they now occur. 



The fossiliferous section is a now disused sand-pit at the foot 

 of Colwick Wood, by the west side of the Great Northern Rail- 

 way bridge ovei- Colwick Road, Nottingham. The section shows 

 the regularly-bedded marls and thick sandstones of the Lower 

 Keuper (Waterstones) with a thin conglomerate at the base, 

 resting on a sharply marked and eroded surface of the Bunter 

 Pebble Beds, which here consist of strongly current-bedded pebbly 

 sandstones containing nodules and lenticular beds of red marl. 

 It is from the uppermost lenticular bed of marl in the Bunter, 

 a few feet below the basal conglomerate of the Keuper, that 

 all the plants have been collected. The section is figured and 

 described at length in the Geological Survey Memoir on the 

 district •!-. 



* " Geol. country between Newark and Nottingham" (Mem. Geol. Sui-v.), 1908, 

 p. 42. 



t Ibid. p. 37. 



