C. Schuchert — Notes on Arctic Paleozoic Fossils. 467 



Art. XLI. — Notes on Arctic Paleozoic Fossils ; by Charles 



Schuchert. 



[Contributions from the Paleontological Laboratory, Peabody Museum. Yale 

 University, New Haven, Conn., TJ. S. A.] 



It is becoming more and more apparent in the study of the 

 paleogeography of North America that the lack of knowledge 

 concerning the stratigraphy of Arctic lands is a great hindrance 

 to a fuller realization of the geologic succession in the United 

 States. In a broad way it is known that the Arctic faunas 

 during the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian spread far to 

 the south, but as to the particular ones that attained the United 

 States little is as yet established. In the hope of adding some- 

 what to this knowledge, the writer has recently examined the 

 collections gathered by A. P. Low, C. F. Hall and J. G. Mc- 

 Millan, with a view to fixing more accurately the geologic 

 horizons indicated by the various fossils. Deputy-Minister 

 Brock was so kind as to loan for this purpose the fossils in the 

 Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, and Professor B. K. 

 Emerson sent those he described many years ago, which were 

 collected by Hall and are now at Amherst College. For these 

 favors the author is very thankful. 



It is the general belief that the Silurian formations are the 

 most widely distributed of Paleozoic strata in Arctic America, 

 and this is probably true. This distribution, however, is seem- 

 ingly not so general as is held, for it is now known that 

 Ordovician and Lower Devonian strata have been mapped as 

 Silurian. In the end it may turn out that the Ordovician forma- 

 tions have the greatest distribution. Of these latter, two series 

 appear to have equally wide range : (1) those of Black River- 

 Trenton time, and (2) those of Middle Richmond time. 



That the Devonian is well represented in Arctic America 

 first became plain through the collections made by Per Schei 

 of the Sverdrup Expedition in the " Fram," 1898-1902. Prob- 

 ably all of Devonian time is represented in Ellesmereland, 

 from the earliest Lower Devonian (Keyser) to the middle of 

 the Upper Devonian. The Lower and Middle Devonian are 

 well recorded here. The former appears to be very much like 

 the Helderbergian of the United States, but the Oriskanian so 

 far is wanting in the collections. On the other hand, the 

 Middle Devonian is of the Euro- Asiatic realm and not of the 

 American province, a fact not fully realized in the work of 

 Meyer (1913). 



The following faunal lists record only the more conspicuous 

 fossils. The localities are arranged from the south northward. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 227.— November, 1914 

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