Mem. Nat. Mus. Vicr., 16, 1949 
YERINGIAN (LOWER DEVONIAN) PLANT REMAINS 
FROM LILYDALE, VICTORIA, WITH NOTES ON A 
COLLECTION FROM A NEW LOCALITY IN THE 
SILURO-DEVONIAN SEQUENCE 
By Isabel Cookson, D.Sc., 
Botany Department, University of Melbourne 
Plates IV-VI, Fig. 1. 
(Received for publication June 21, 1949.) 
The main object of the present paper is to give a description 
of plant remains from type localities in Yeringian beds at Lily- 
dale, Victoria. The principal locality (Hull Road, Lilydale) was 
referred to in a previous paper (Cookson 1935, p. 146) and 
subsequently a list of the main types collected there was recorded 
(Cookson 1945). This collection now includes remains referable 
to or at least comparable with Sporogonites, Zosterophyllum, 
Yarravia and Hedeia. It will be supplemented by reference to 
specimens from two additional outcrops, one near Lilydale and 
the other at Killara, about 74 miles further east. 
The occurrence of plants in this area is of special stratigraphieal 
interest. For many years, the Yeringian series was believed to 
belong to the Silurian period, but the position assigned to it within 
that range of time varied according to the author (see Gill 
1942, Table 1). Chapman and Thomas (1935), when defining the 
Victorian Silurian succession, correlated the Yeringian with the 
Upper Ludlow of Britain. Beneath it they placed the Melbournian 
division (Lower Ludlow), whilst the basal series, the Keilorian 
or Lower Silurian, was correlated with the Llandoverian of the 
British suecession. Later Thomas (1937), in dealing with Silurian 
rocks of the Heathcote area, pointed out that detailed work was 
necessary to determine ‘how much of the Devonian is included in 
the Yeringian.”’ 
In 1938 Shirley noted that “the Yeringian contains at least one 
fauna similar to that of the Baton River series?” (Lower Devonian 
of New Zealand). During the same year, in a discussion of the 
stromatoporoid fauna of the Yeringian limestone at Cave Hill, 
Lilydale, Ripper (1938) made the suggestion that this deposit 
«should probably be placed in the Devonian." Hill (1939), on the 
evidence of the rugose corals of the same limestone, concluded that 
its age is either Lower or Middle Devonian. Shirley’s contention 
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