Carboniferous Plants from Sinai

Abstract

I. I ntroduction S everal years ago Dr. John Ball of the Egyptian Geological Survey handed to me for description some specimens of fossil plants which he had collected in the Sinai Peninsula : it is fitting that the long-delayed fulfilment of my undertaking should be accompanied by an apology. The fossils were found in a district between the Wadi el Hommur and the Wadi Khaboba in the hills about the little Wadi Um Shebba. Dr. Ball described the locality as situated approximately on lat. 29° 7' N. and long. 33° 15' E., about 15 miles east of the Gulf of Suez and 7 miles south of the Tih escarpment.1 The diagrammatic section (fig. 1) is an enlargement of a drawing supplied by Dr. Ball : the position of the plant-bearing bed is indicated by crosses. In 1868 Salter gave a brief description of a species of Lepidodendron, which he named Lepidodendron mosaicum, believed to be from the district where Dr. Ball's fossils were obtained. Salter did not publish a figure of the new species, and his notes on it are inadequate as a diagnosis. A specimen in the British Museum (V. 19487 : PI. XXI, fig. 1) labelled Lepidodendron mosaicum from the Desert of Sinai, which is from the Sir Roderick Murchison Collection (old number 8950), may be the actual fossil on which Salter founded his species. Dr. Ball (1916, p. 152, fig. 25) in his memoir on West-Central Sinai figured two decorticated specimens as Lepidodendron from Wadi Um Shebba which