A new locality for Triassic reptiles, with notes on the Trias found in the parishes of Urquhart and Lhanbryde, Morayshire

Abstract

Last year, while workmen were breaking hard sandstone from a rocky field about a mile north of the village of Urquhart, and about five miles east of Elgin, they found a nearly complete specimen of Telerpeton. I secured the fossil for my collection and compared it with Telerpeton casts from the Trias of Lossiemouth. The skeleton is well exposed from nose to tail, and shows casts of bones and teeth very clearly. The head and body is about 6 inches long, and the tail about 3 inches. It is somewhat smaller than the Telerpeton described by Huxley 1 in 1866. Twenty-three years ago the late Rev. Dr Gordon of Birnie asked me to examine some fossil scutes in pieces of sandstone at Urquhart. I did so, and identified them as belonging to Stagonolepis , a crocodile-like reptile found in the Trias of Lossiemouth, Spynie and Findrassie. I had no idea at that time where these fossils came from, but now think they may have come from a small quarry, worked last century, near the place where my new Telerpeton was found. I considered long ago that all the solid rock between Elgin and Urquhart was of Triassic age, not Old Red Sandstone as often marked in geological maps. I could match rocks found at Bear's Head, Stonewells, Meft and Lhanbryde with fragments from Lossiemouth, Spynie and Findrassie, where reptiles have been found. I believe with Murchison, Judd and Gordon, that the cherty rock in this district overlies the Triassic Sandstone, as