Benson.—_—Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Seas in Australasia. 47 
Cretaceous. Out of a described fauna of thirty-two species, eighteen 
occur in the Rolling Downs beds (Etheridge 18924, 1901 ; Chapman, 1913). 
with which the Maryborough bed has since been correlated. Walkom 
(1919) has shown that the flora of the Maryborough bed appears to 
be an Upper Jurassic one, being free from angiosperms, while that of 
the immediately overlying Burrum beds is of the Neocomian type. e 
therefore concludes that the Maryborough marine fauna will probably 
have to be considered as Upper Jurassic, and to this period we may thus 
tentatively refer the lower portions of the Rolling Downs series. 
In north-western Queensland there are widespread water-bearing lime- 
stones which Dunstan (1920) considers to be of fresh-water origin and 
Jurassic age, and to lie conformably beneath the Rolling Downs series. 
On account of the lithological character of these rocks, Woolnough (1912) 
has compared them with the adjacent partly silicified Lower Cambrian 
limestones. Danes (1916), however, states that he has found foraminifera 
in them, the specimens being referred to Operculina, Globigerina, Nodosaria, 
Haplophragmium, Cristellaria, and Textularia, a group of genera which give 
little indication of the age of the formation. Dunstan (1916) is disposed to 
agree with Jensen (1914), who suggests that these are merely Tertiary fossils 
occurring just like the adjacent but rare accumulations of Tertiary mollusca— 
namely, in small “ pockets " in the surface of the Cambrian (?) limestone. 
Referring to the fauna of the Rolling Downs beds, among the most 
distinctive fossils are certain foraminifera, chiefly Lituolidae, and the 
endemic lamellibranchs Maccoyella, Pseudoavicula, and Fissiluna, and the 
large cephalopods Crioceras and Ancyloceras. According to Etheridge 
n’s (1902) enumeration, the fauna contains 234 species, of which 
crispi, a world-wide Cenomanian form, with species related to other types 
in the Cenomanian series with which both Haug (1911) and Woods (1917) 
correlate the upper part of the Rolling Downs beds. The report (Hector, 
1886) that Belemnites australis, a Rolling Downs form, occurs also in 
the Jurassic beds of the Kawhia and Waikato Heads is the result of a 
mistaken identification, but B. aucklandicus in the same series is very like 
B. liversidgei in the Rolling Downs beds (Etheridge, 1892a, p. 491). 
In regard to the origin of this fauna, Professor David (1914) and 
Mr. Dun (1914, 1919) believe that it was developed in an extensive but 
shallow epicontinental sea, which, extending out from the region of the 
present Gulf of Carpentaria, covered nearly a third of the continent. It 
is possible, as Haug suggests, that the transgression may have been more 
extensive in Middle Cretaceous times than in those immediately prior 
thereto, but of this there is not yet sufficient proof. The Maryborough 
о 
that Mr. Etheridge frequently stated his method of nomenclature, which accords 
with Uhlig's (1911) principle: “I do not consider it wise to identify a form with a 
i ds of miles distant unless the agreement is so 
close as to leave no room for doubt as to their identity." 
