N. E. Stevens— Petrified Palms. 431 



Art. XXKI. — Tivo Petrified Palms from Interior Nortli 

 America; by Neil E. Stevens. 



The discovery of calcified palm trunks in the upper 

 Pierre Cretaceous of South Dakota was announced in 

 1903 by Wieland.^ The discovery of any plants with 

 structure conserved in marine horizons is notable. More- 

 over palm wood of undoubted Cretaceous age has been 

 reported only a few times in North America, and with the 

 exception of Palmoxylon Cliffwoodensis Berry^ the spe- 

 cies are all from more recent horizons than the Pierre. An 

 uncommon interest, however, attaches to these Pierre 

 palms because of association in a remarkable assemblage 

 of land and marine forms. In a paper discussing the 

 marine turtle Archelon Wieland says : 



With Archelon ischyros and Marshii there occurs in the upper- 

 most 100 feet of the Fort Pierre (No. 4 Upper Cretaceous), as 

 developed on the Cheyenne Eiver, a series of immediately asso- 

 ciated forms of more than ordinary interest. In the first place, I 

 have obtained in this same horizon well preserved toe bones of a 

 Dinosaurian nearly of the form and nearly as large as those of 

 Claosaurus annectens, which I shall figure later as Claosaurus ( ?) 

 affinis sp. nov. And presumably from the same drift from a not 

 far distant shore, I secured an exquisitely preserved new species 

 of Palm stem, later to be described as Palmoxylon cheyennense. 



Secondly, associated with these land forms are numerous 

 [Plesiosaurs] , a shark (a broad-toothed Lamma), a fish allied to 

 Beryx, a Sanrocephalodont, and the following invertebrates, — 

 Nautilus Be Kayi (very abundant in the matrix of one of the 

 large turtle skeletons), Placenticeras placenta, Scaphites nodosus, 

 Emperoceras Beecheri Hyatt, Baculites ovatus and compressus 

 Say, Callista Dewey i M. and H., Inoceramus, etc., etc. 



Eegarding the discovery and age of the petrified palm 

 trunks, Wieland, the only person who has thus far 

 observed them afield, makes the further statement for 

 publication here : 



The great turtles, the Dinosaur, Plesiosaurs, the invertebrates 

 and the palms, could, in fact, be observed within a radius of one 

 mile. The palms are found on both sides of the South Fork of 

 the Cheyenne where the Oligocene overlap is most deeply cut, 

 to the east of the Black Hills, in the region of the caiion-like 

 ''draws" of the bad lands, know as the "Quinn," ''Battle 

 Creek," and the "Corral Draw." They have been found four 



^Wieland, G. E., this Journal (4) vol. 15, pp. 211-216. 1903 

 == Berry, E. W., this Journal (4) vol. 41, pp. 193-197. 1916. 



