October 18th, 1919. 
Canada 
Geological Survey 
Museum Bulletin No. 29. 
GEOLOGICAL SERIES, No. 36. 
THE DISCOVERY OF A PORTAGE FAUNA IN THE MACKENZIE 
RIVER VALLEY. 
By E. M. Kindle. 
INTRODUCTION. 
One of the results of the Canadian Geological Survey expedition to the 
Mackenzie river in 1917, under the writer’s direction, was the discovery of 
a Portage fauna in the Devonian shales of the upper Mackenzie valley. 
The absence of this fauna from the earlier collections made in the Mackenzie 
valley by McConnell was doubtless one of the reasons which lead Whit- 
eaves 1 to conclude that “ the subdivisions of the Devonian system that 
exist in the state of New York and in Ontario are probably not recogniz- 
able ” in the Mackenzie River district. The merging in Whiteaves’ report 
of the Spirifer disjunctus fauna from Hay river and the Stryngocephalus 
fauna from the Ramparts— localities several hundred miles apart — into a 
single fauna, very effectively masked such resemblances to the New York 
section as they individually possessed. 
It now appears that the fauna of the lower part of the Mackenzie 
River Devonian has little or no relationship to that in the sections of 
eastern America, whereas the upper Devonian faunas of the Mackenzie 
section are closely related to those of the New York section. The rela- 
tionship of the latest or Sp. disjunctus fauna of the region to the New York 
Chemung will be discussed elsewhere. The purpose of this report is to 
show that in the Mackenzie River section the Sp . disjunctus fauna is 
preceded by a fauna which correlates with the Portage of New York. 
It may be noted here that Dr. J. M. Clarke 2 in his admirable memoir 
' on the Portage fauna of New York refers to a black shale 150 feet thick at 
the mouth of Clearwater river on Athabaska river, and its supposed equiva- 
lents to the northwest which he intimates hold the position in that region 
of the Genesee-Portage faunas. In this interpretation he accepted in some 
degree the opinion of Meek 3 who in turn was misled by the mistake of 
11 ‘The fossils of the Devonian rocks of the Mackenzie River basin,” Geol. Surv., Can., p. 257. 
Cont. to Can. Pal. vol. I, pt. Ill, 1891, pp. 197-253, pis. 27-32. 
a “ Naples fauna in Western New York.” N.Y. State Mus. Mem. No. 6, 1904, pp. 376. 
•‘‘Remarks on the geology of the Mackenzie river,” etc. Trans. Chicago Acad. Sc., vol. I, 
pt. 1, 1867. p. 63. 
61973 — 1 * 
