502 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The middle and upper Trenton must, hence, be either absent 

 or represented by shales of the appearance of the Hudson river 

 shales. The latter conclusion seems the most acceptable to the 

 writer as it agrees with his own results obtained around Albany. 



C. E. Beecher 



The next important discovery of fossils in the Hudson river 

 series of shales was made by C. E. Beecher in the shales near 

 the old Dudley observatory, a short distance northwest of Al- 

 bany (26). The following fossils were identified: Clima- 

 cograptus bicornis, Dicranograptus ramosus, 

 Diplograptus mucronatus, crinoid stems, T r e m a - 

 tis terminalis, Leptaena sericea, L. subtenta, 

 Orthis t e s t u d in ar i a, Zygospira modesta, Av- 

 icula trentonensis, Cleidophorus planulatus, 

 A m b o n y c h i a u n d u 1 a t a , T e 1 1 i n o m y a d u b i a , T. 

 1 e V a t a , L y r o d e s m a p o s t ® t r i a t u m: , 10 undeter- 

 mined species of lamellibranchiata, Hyolithes a m eri- 

 ca n u s , H. isp. ?, B e 1 1 e r o p h o u b i 1 o b a t u s , B. c a n - 

 cellatus, Murchisonia gracilis, Endoceras 

 p r o t e i f o r m e , O' r t h o c e r a s b i 1 i n e a t u m ?, o^ r n- 

 u 1 i t e s f 1 e X u o s u ,s , P 1 u m u 1 i t e s sp. ?, T r i a r t h r u s 

 b e c k i , T r i n u c le u s c o n c e n t r i c u s. 



Beecher referred this fauna to the Utica epoch, and Walcott 

 (36a : 345) later declared it to be '^ as a whole, characteristic 

 of the upper portion of the Utica shale in the Mohawk valley 

 and of the passage beds between the Utica shale zone and the 

 lower portion of the Lorraine shales in the section at Lorraine^ 

 Jefferson co. N. Y." 



The import of this discovery is that it establishes the hitherto 

 only suspected presence of the Utica shale among the shales of 

 the Hudson valley, but it does not warrant the conclusion of 

 the Utica age of the Normans kill graptolite fauna, for of the 

 three graptolites found by Beecher, two, Olimacograptus 

 bicornis and Dicranograptus ramosus, are com- 

 mon to both the Normans kill and ptica faunas^ apd the third, 



