400 INDEX TO THE STEATIGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICA. 



all parts of the world where the Carboniferous deposits are at all developed. The line of junction 

 of these deposits with the Silurian on which they rest is northeast to east-northeast (true). 

 Like the former, they occur in low, flat beds, sometimes rising into cliffs, but never reaching the 

 elevation attained by the SUurian rocks in Lancaster Sound." 



In regard to EUesmere Land, Low ^^^^ quotes Schei ''°^ as follows : 



The Carboniferous rocks of western EUesmere appear to be isolated areas resting upon the 

 underlying Devonian and in turn covered by Mesozoic rocks. Schei describes the area at Store 

 Bjornekap as consisting in its lowest part of beds of brownish-gray hard fossihferous limestone; 

 higher up, of a white pure limestone, flinty limestone, and pure fhnt strata, richly fossihferous, 

 among the fossils being Lithostrotion sp., Fenestella sp., StreptorJiyncTius crenistria, Rhynchonella 

 (Pugnax) sp., Spirifer cfr. ovalis, cuspidatus, mosquensis, Productus civ. semireticulatus, costatus, 

 punctatus, cora, etc. 



Lists of the fossils collected by various expeditions up to 1860 are given by 

 Haughton*" and republished in the "Arctic manual," 1875, edited by T. Rupert 

 Jones.*" 



The lower division of the Arctic Carboniferous, which consists of sandstones and 

 shales, has furnished a few plants from localities in Melville and Bathurst islands. 

 Heer assigned the formation to the Ursa stage and correlated it with similar 

 deposits in Bear Island and Spitzbergen. David White, however, regards the 

 typical Ursa as Devonian at latest, and reports that the plants from the Arctic 

 Archipelago represent the lower Carboniferous. The formation is probably related 

 to the Mississippian of the section at Cape Lisburne, Alaska. 



The upper division of the Carboniferous in the Arctic is the limestone from 

 which the marine invertebrate fossils have been obtained. Girty has examined 

 the literature and has furnished the following statement : 



The most extensive fauna reported was obtained at Depot Point in Grinnell Land. In it 

 have been identified Fusulina hyperhorea, Stylastrsea inconferta, Lithostrotion iasaltiforme, 

 ZapJirentis ombos, ClisiopTiyUum tumulus, Syringopora aulopora, Fenestella arctica, Productus 

 semireticulatus var. frigidus, and Spirifer TceiThavii. 



This fauna, conaposed as it is largely of corals, is difficult to correlate satisfactorily. A sug- 

 gestion is found in the fact that Tschernyschew states that the fossil cited by Haughton under 

 the name Spirifer Iceilhavii undoubtedly belongs to Spiriferella saranse, which is a species of the 

 Gschelian fauna of Russia. Some of the other Arctic brachiopods show similar alUances and 

 this is also conspicuously the case with certain of the Alaskan faunas. It seems highly probable, 

 therefore, that the Gschelian fauna was distributed over this region. 



Some of the species cited from Depot Point have been found also at other stations, one or 

 two at a time. In addition the following have been identified apparently from the same lime- 

 stone in the Parry Islands: Syringopora geniculata, Productus cora, Productus suLcatus var. 

 horealis, and Spirifer arcticus. 



Still another Carboniferous formation with invertebrate fossils is found in EUesmere Land. 

 In the preliminary notice Schei refers his fauna to the upper Carboniferous and if his identifica- 

 tion of Spirifer mosquensis, a leading fossil of the upper Carboniferous of Russia, is to be trusted, 

 the horizon is possibly the Mosquensis zone of the Russian section, which comes in at the base of 

 the upper Carboniferous. The position of the EUesmere occurrence would then be below the 

 horizon of the Carboniferous limestone of the Parry Islands and above the phytiferous beds. 

 Whether the Spirifer mosquensis horizon occurs in the Parry Islands can not be determined 

 from the fragmentary paleontologic evidence thus far obtained. There is yet no clear suggestion 

 of two distinct faunas in the species cited from the Parry Islands and from Grinnell Land, 

 nor does the fauna from those areas present any close simUarity with that from EllesmereLand, ^ 



