ProssEeR.|  Oretaceous.—Comanche Series of Kansas. LS 
upper part of the Comanche to the south making the latter 70 feet 
thinner on Mt. Nebo than on the more northern hill. 
KIOWA OF CENTRAL KANSAS. 
To the north of the Arkansas river the Kiowa shales have been 
found in a number of isolated localities. They were first reported 
in 1889 by Professor Cragin from “the western part of McPherson 
county,’ and in the following year he published an account of this 
outcrop “On the west line of McPherson county” as follows: “This 
jocality has been insufficiently examined, but is characterized by 
yellow to blue-gray shales with layers of Ostrea Franklum breccia 
and other stony layers in which Cardium Kansasense occurs, together 
with Turritelia Marnochu, var. Belviderei, and a species of Neritina 
(apparently identical with that from Belvidere), and one Dentalium.. 
With others of the normal form, occur frequent specimens of the 
Turriielia, in which the apical region is remarkably produced and 
attenuated. Bands of red and yellow ochre occur here. One or two 
similar outcrops occur in the east part of Rice county.’” 
Later in discussing the stratigraphic relation of the Mentor 
- beds to the Kiowa shales Professor Cragin said: “While the Mentor 
beds generally rest upon the Permian in Saline county, they rest 
in part upon the Kiowa shales further southward, as shown by the: 
occurrence beneath them of black shales amongst some of whose 
fossils, submitted to the writer from a few miles west of Linds- 
borg by Prof. J. A. Udden, are Modiola. stonewallensis, nob., and 
Sphenodiscus pedernalis, Roem.’? These are the only published 
references to the occurrence of the Comanche series in central 
Kansas, as far as the writer is aware. 
In South Sharps Creek township in the western part of McPher- 
son county, Mr. J. W. Beede found typical specimens of the coarser, 
very fossiliferous Kiowa shales. The locality where best exposed is 
in the “Natural corral’ on the northwest quarter, section 5, township 
18, range 5 w. Mr. Beede measured a section at this locality which 
1 EF. W. Cragin, Bulletin Washburn College Laboratory Natural History, vol. 2, 
p. 87. Topeka. 
2 Ibid., p. 80. 
3 J. A. Udden, American Geologist, vol. XVI, 1895, p. 165. 
