Descriptions of the Graptolites of the Arenig and Llandeilo Rocks of St. David's

Abstract

I n the neighbourhood of St. David's, the Arenig rocks, described by Mr. Hicks in his paper read at the last meeting of the Geological Society*, are the earliest in which Graptolites are known to occur; and yet, when once they appear, so diversified are their forms that these Pembrokeshire rocks are only equalled, in the number and variety of the genera they contain, by the Canadian Graptolite-bearing rocks of equivalent age known as the Quebec Group. In more ancient deposits two species only, belonging to one of the two great sections into which these fossils are divided, have hitherto been detected, viz. Dictyograptus (Dictyonema) socialis , Salter, and Dendrograptus Hallianus , Prout. The former occurring in the lower portion of the Tremadoc rocks of North Wales, and the latter in the equivalent strata (the Potsdam Sandstone of America), it is impossible to say which genus is the earlier, or whether the group is first represented in Britain or in America. Before the discovery, in 1872, of the extensive series of Graptolites which characterize the Lower Arenig rocks of Ramsey Island, the Skiddaw Slates of Cumberland were supposed to be our earliest Graptolite-bearing rocks; but it is now known that the lowest rocks of the Arenig Group exposed in the vicinity of St. David's, in which Graptolites abound, are of greater age than any part of the Skiddaw Slates yet described; and it is highly probable that they are also older even than the lowest beds of the Quebec Group known to contain

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