CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVONIAN PALEONTOLOGY. 
1908. 
\I(TI. -FOSSIL FAUNAS OF THE DEVONIAN AND MISSISSIPPI ("LOWEE 
CARBONIFEROUS") OF VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, AND KENTUCKY, 
By II . S. Williams and E. M. Kindle. 
INTRODUCTION. 
By II. S, Williams. 
The investigations herein reported were begun for the purpose of 
ascertaining the nature of the changes in sedimentation, in fossils, and 
in sequence of faunas southward along the Devonian formations in the 
southern Appalachians. Collections were made b}^ the senior author 
in southern Virginia and eastern Kentucky in 1895, and the results of 
the preliminary stud} 7 of the fossils were reported in a paper read 
before the Geological Society of America in December, 1896. a 
In southern Virginia (at Bigstone Gap) the Devonian is represented 
by a continuous black shale, which probably runs upward beyond the 
stratigraphic horizon at which Carboniferous faunas appear in other 
regions. In east-central Kentucky the black shale, supposed to be in 
large part Devonian, continues upward beyond the horizon at whicli 
the earliest Carboniferous faunas appear. In neither the Bigstone 
Gap nor the Irvine (Ky.) sections was any trace of the Chemung 
fauna of New York seen. At several places, at the base of the black 
shales, the latest fauna appears to be no younger than Oriskany, and 
suggested that either there was an unconformity at the base or a black 
shale sedimentation continued during post-Oriskany Devonian time. 
Evidence of the unconformity at the base of the black shale is fur- 
nished by the sections at Brooks station, 15 miles south of Louisville, 
and at Huber, Bullitt County, Ky. 
In order to demonstrate the conditions intermediate between those 
represented by the typical northern sections and by the sections in 
the southern Appalachians, Dr. E. M. Kindle in 1898 made a special 
a On the southern Devonian formations: Am. Jour. Sei., 4th ser., vol. 3, 1897, pp. 395-405. 
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