47° [Proc. B.N.F.C., 



we would then have exposed the blue limestone, shales, and 

 clays deposited during the liassic age, which at that time was in 

 the form of marine mud, and the numerous fossil contents which 

 we now find in the blue limestones, shales, and clays indicate 

 the nature of the animals and plants that flourished during the 

 liassic period. Nay, more ; Barney's Point as we now find it 

 is fairly typical of the physical conditions that prevailed in liassic 

 times. We find ourselves on the shore of a lake or lagoon, with 

 clay banks and a muddy shore, and scattered over the surface 

 there is a multitude of animal remains, once living creatures, 

 now fossil petrifactions, yet wonderfully suggestive of the 

 condition of life in liassic times. Walking over the surface, we 

 pick up numerous fragments of ammonites, that strange nauti- 

 loid form of cephalopods that swarmed in and about Larne 

 Lough in liassic times. There were several hundred species then 

 living, but they have all died out, as well as their immediate 

 relatives the belemnites. So characteristic were the ammonites 

 of the lias, certain species became typical of each zone. Thus 

 the stratigraphical position of the exposure at Barney's Point is 

 known as the ammonites angulaius zone. 



Mixed up with the numerous fragments of ammonites, the 

 rarer belemnites, and many other extinct species, we find at 

 Barney's Point some minute but beautiful five-rayed stars. 

 Indeed, they were when living closely allied to the well-known 

 starfish, but unlike the free modern representative, the 

 Pentacrinite of the Lias was fixed, its solid stem, branches, and 

 arrus-like bushy plants covered the sea bottom in tangled 

 groups. Now the separated plants of which the stems were 

 compnsed may be found in the fine beach gravel or petrified 

 with numerous other marine forms in the fragments of blue 

 limestone scattered about Barney's Point. These fragments 

 have been washed out of the adjoining bank by the action of 

 the waves, and are made up of fossil organisms. 



Continuing our search, we found that the cidaris, a very 

 remote ancestor of the modern sea urchin, was represented by 

 separate plates and spines loose in the gravel or petrified with 



