STRATIGRAPHIC GEOLOGY 219 



The Permian rocks are sandstones, clay shales, and limestones cut at 

 many places by eruptive dikes. For the most part they are approxi- 

 mately horizontal, and they seem to be of land or fresh-water origin, 

 though what are supposed to be brackish water fossils have been found in 

 them at Eancho Grande and Lageadinho, on Eio Cagador near the old 

 Iraty colony, and Mojolinho and at several other places, all of them in 

 the State of Parana. *° 



Topographically the upper Permian beds form vast stretches of table 

 lands that are deeply eroded by streams and supporting a sparse vege- 

 tation. 



Though fossils have been found in the Permian in the north and south 

 of Brazil, none has yet been identified from the great area covered by 

 these rocks in the State of Minas Geraes. The fact that poorly preserved 

 but unrecognizable fossils are reported from this region by both Claussen 

 and Liais leads to the reasonable hope that a careful search for them may 

 yet be rewarded with unquestionable evidence of the age of the deposits 

 and of the conditions under which they were laid down. 



Prior to 1840 Claussen found the impression of a univalve shell in 

 sandstone in the region of the upper Eio Abaete, but he was unable to 

 identify it, and it was deposited by him in the National Museum at Eio 

 de Janeiro.*^ Liais also reports fossils in this region, and as his account 

 of them is the fullest and almost the only one we have, it is given here at 

 some length.*- 



"A short distance from Pitangui and near Abbadie I have seen nodular and 

 bituminous limestones with undeterminable traces of fossils, among which T 

 could distinguish small lenticular bodies from two to three millimeters in 

 diameter, which seemed to me to belong to the foraminifera, although the 

 alteration prevents my being able to say so definitely. Near Lapa dos Urubus, 

 on the right side of the Rio das Velhas, a short distance below the confluence 

 of the Parauna, I have seen a marble with a white ground, the beds standing 

 on end and cut by reddish and gray veins. On polishing pieces of this marble 

 I have recognized fragments of univalve shells, but quite undeterminable. In 

 another bituminous limestone of the same horizon I have found traces of 

 cirriped Crustacea more recognizable and belonging to the genus Pollicipes. 

 which indicates a marine origin for these limestones and places them in the 

 secondary epoch. 



"In the macignos, on the borders of Rio Abaete, other fossils are found 

 which also show the formation in question to be marine. There are impres- 

 sions of the genus Ostrea. M. Claussen has already mentioned them, and In 



*'' Euzebio de Paulo Oliveira : Geologia do Estado do Paranft. pp. 180-i;^l. Rio de 

 Janeiro, 1916. 



*i P. Claussen : Notes geologiques sur la province de Minas Geraes. Bui. de I'Acad. 

 Royale de Bruxelles. vol. viii. no. 5. p. 9. Bruxelles. 1841. 



*' Emmanuel Liais : Climats, geologie, etc.. du Bresil, pp. 147-148. Paris, 1872. 



