REVISIONAL STUDY OF 
THE ORDER PALAEODICTYOPTERA IN 
THE UPPER CARBONIFEROUS SHALES OF 
COMMENTRY, FRANCE. PART I 1 
By Jarmila Kukalova 2 
Charles University, Prague 
The Upper Carboniferous shales in Commentry, France, are of 
incomparable significance for the study of insect evolution. The 
excellent preservation of the fossils and the diversity of insect groups 
represented make the Commentry fossils basic to any understanding 
of Palaeozoic insects and early insect evolution. 
Almost all of the Commentry insects are contained in the Institut 
de Paleontologie in the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 
Paris, this constituting the largest assemblage in the world of Upper 
Carboniferous insects. A very few Commentry specimens are in the 
British Museum (Natural History) in London and in the Man- 
chester Museum (Stirrup Collection ) y Manchester, England. 
The Commentry shales are part of a small coal basin, situated on 
the north side of the large Carboniferous furrow of the Massif 
Central. The fossiliferous layers are of fresh water origin and are 
allochthonous, apparently deposited by streams in delta-like, detritic 
sediments along the shore of a lake. During his early study on 
stratigraphy and sediments (1880-1890), based on surface outcrops 
of the Commentry beds, Fayol assembled the greater part of the 
collection of fossil insects. This remarkable collection was turned 
over to Charles Brongniart (grandson of the palaeobotanist, Adolphe 
Brongniart), who was then an assistant in the Zoological Laboratory 
of the Museum and who was interested in both geology and en- 
tomology. Brongniart’s studies were brought out in a single major 
work, “Recherches pour servir a Thistoire des insectes fossiles des 
temps primaires”, published in 1893. This was a pioneer work in 
the study of fossil insects. Although his classification of the insects 
is now seriously out-dated, Brongniart demonstrated in his illustra- 
tions and his descriptive accounts an exceptional ability for observa- 
Tublished with the aid of a grant from the Colies Fund of the Museum 
of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College and a Grant-in-Aid of Re- 
search from the Society of the Sigma Xi. This study has also been sup- 
ported in part by grants numbered GB2038 and GB7038 (F. M. Carpenter, 
Principal Investigator) from the National Science Foundation. 
Currently Alexander Agassiz Lecturer in Zoology, Harvard University. 
