A New Araucarioxylon from New Zealand . 1 
BY 
MARIE C. STOPES, D.Sc., Ph.D., 
Fellow and Lecturer in Palaeobotany , University College , London . 
With Plate XX and three Figures in the Text. 
WO years ago Mr. J. Allan Thomson, Palaeontologist to the Geological 
J- Survey of New Zealand, sent me a specimen for description of which 
he wrote : ‘ I have a fine specimen of wood with bark preserved, from the 
base of the Cretaceous as developed at Amuri Bluff.’ Later on he kindly 
gave me further information about its geological horizon: c At Amuri 
Bluff the wood sands lie beneath a calcareous conglomerate which contains 
ammonites, belemnites, Trigonia, Inoceramus, and Aporrhais. This in turn 
is overlain by mudstones with saurians (Cimiliosaurus). There has been 
so much discussion as to whether certain Tertiary beds higher up in the 
section are conformable or not to the Cretaceous that the fact that there are 
undoubted Cretaceous beds is not always made clear.’ 
Though the necessary work on the mollusca in the beds above the 
wood-containing beds is not yet completed, it is clear that our fossil is 
certainly Cretaceous, and probably of mid-Cretaceous age. 
The wood contains several interesting details in its structure, and the 
surprising paucity of fossil remains of Araucarians in the very region where 
they are now native renders its description desirable, particularly at 
present, when the Araucarineae are being so much discussed. 
Description of the Specimen. 
General. The fossil consists of part of a small trunk or branch, and is 
at present roughly circular in outline and about 8 cm. in diameter. It may 
have been part of a much larger stem, and certainly must have been at least 
a little larger when alive because it is now entirely decorticated. When first 
observed the trunk appears to consist of a smaller woody core, surrounded 
5 Published by permission of the Director of the Geological Survey of New Zealand. 
Annals of Botany, Vol. XXVIII. No. CX. April, 1914.] 
