0. Holtedalil — Upper Cambrian Fauna. 343 



Aet. XXXIII. — ^4w Upper Cambrian Fauna of Pacific 

 Type in the European Arctic Region; by Olaf Holte- 



DAHL. 



During the recent Norwegian scientific expedition to 

 Novaya Zemlya, the long, arched islands north of the Ural 

 mountains, the present author, who was also the leader of 

 the expedition, tried to clear up as much as possible of the 

 stratigraphy and tectonics of that vast country. 



I shall not here go into the question of the general geo- 

 logical structure of this old mountain range, folded in 

 Permian time, nor into the stratigraphy of those Paleo- 

 zoic formations which have been previously known to 

 exist in these islands, viz., the Devonian and the Carbon- 

 iferous, but will only bring to the attention of geologists 

 the occurrence here of strata as old as the uppermost 

 Cambrian. As our knowledge of Cambrian rocks beyond 

 the 70th degree of latitude is exceedingly scarce, the find 

 is of considerable interest. It may be useful, therefore, 

 to give a short preliminary note of this discovery, as the 

 working out of all of the fossils gathered during the expe- 

 dition will take considerable time. 



The fossils were found near the west coast of the south- 

 ern island, on the peninsula between Bessimyanni and 

 Gribovii fjords. The first fossils were found in the moun- 

 tains 7 kilometers northwest of the head of Bessimyanni 

 Fjord (about 73° X. L.) in a rather dark grey, fine- 

 grained calcareous sandstone. By following the general 

 strike of the rocks (here X.-S.) I found further north a 

 f ossiliferous sandstone of a somewhat different character, 

 lighter colored and with thin layers of somewhat crystal- 

 line limestone. This rock continues down to the Gribovii 

 Fjord. The preservation of the fossils is generally 

 rather bad and their original form has commonly been 

 altered by the tectonic pressure. 



At the southern locality were found the following forms : 

 a species of brachiopod that is by far the most common 

 fossil and that belongs to Huenella Walcott, a genus 

 known from the Cambrian of North America, China, and 

 Australia. The form, of which illustrations are given in 

 figure 1, in its general exterior features is very suggestive 

 of H. texana AValcott from the Upper Cambrian of Texas. 

 Indeed, there exist in my material many valves that do not 



