FIELD INVESTIGATIONS IN I92I 841 



crinoid under the name Platycrinus huntsvillce. In 1891 Wachsmuth and 



Springer resurrected this name, and on the basis of hundreds of complete 

 heads found by the senior author near Huntsville, Alabama, gave a full 

 description with many illustrations of this variable and stratigraphically 

 most important species. Several visits to localities in the vicinity of 

 Huntsville made by me in the past 20 years had failed to disclose a single 

 complete head of this crinoid. In the meantime, however, I had studied 

 the large Wachsmuth collections from the Montesana limestone of that 

 region now in the Springer collection of the U. S. National Museum. 

 These studies, particularly of the slabs showing associated fossils, led me 

 to the belief expressed in my 1917 Kentucky report, that the zone from 

 which the bulk of the material of the Platycrinus was taken corresponds 

 in age to some part of the Upper Ohara of western Kentucky. This con- 

 clusion has been combated both by implication and direct statement by 

 others who have worked on Chester problems. The necessity of acquiring 

 more definite information regarding the position of this Platycrinus zone 

 in the Alabama section being recognized, it was decided to make another 

 visit to this locality during the past summer. Accordingly, and on this 

 occasion better prepared by data as to the location of the collecting 

 grounds supplied by Doctors Springer and Kirk, the latter of whom had 

 accompanied Mr. Wachsmuth on his last visit to them, we — that is, 

 Messrs. Butts, Mesler, and myself — made a special trip to Huntsville in 

 June of the present year. The information in hand mentioned as a 

 favored spot a hill about eight miles south of Huntsville, on the road to 

 Whitesburg. Arriving at the designated spot, we found two hills — one 

 to the east, the other on the west side of the road. The one on the east 

 being the more rocky, we decided to try it first. It required but a short 

 climb to bring us to a bench made by a 5- or 6-foot bed of shaly limestone, 

 which alone of all the exposures in this hill reminded us, in its lithologic 

 character, of the concerned crinoid material in the National Museum. 



Our search of this outcrop, though very thorough, failed completely to 

 reveal even a fragment of Platycrinus. Almost discouraged, we decided 

 to try the hill on the west side of the road. In less than a minute after 

 reaching the level that we had searched so carefully over more than a 

 mile of exposure on the other hill, one of us let out a yell of discovery. 

 Platycrinus huntsvillce and other crinoids were present in abundance. 

 We had succeeded in fixing the position of the crinoid zone in the section ! 



Two other pertinent illustrations may be given that similarly show the 

 local occurrence of fossil crinoids and blastoids that were not subjected 

 to much wave action and rolling on beaches. Both concern species that 

 have an important bearing on the questioned classification of the Sainte 

 Genevieve limestone and the vertical range of Platycrinus huntsvillce. 

 LV — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 33, 1921 



