Note on the occurrence of a new species of Carboniferous Crustacean at Ardross, near Elie, Fife

Abstract

At a meeting of this Society, held on the evening of the 21st February 1884, my friend Mr Kinnear and I exhibited a collection of Carboniferous Crustacea obtained from a series of beds of limestone shales which are exposed on the shore between tide-marks at Ardross Castle, near Elie, on the south coast of Fife. It was then stated, in a short notice of the fossils, that the Crustacean remains, although numerous, comprised only two species. One of these was a Phyllopod Crustacean, Dithyrocaris glabra, Eth., and the other a Decapod Crustacean, Palæocrangon socialis, Salter. So far as I am aware, these were the only species of Crustacea which had been detected in these beds at Ardross, until I was so fortunate as to come across a single specimen of the genus Acanthocaris, Peach. As far back as 1861, Crustacean remains had been noted in these beds by the Rev. Thomas Brown, whose admirable paper, ‶On the Mountain Limestone and Lower Carboniferous Rocks of the Fifeshire Coasts,″ was published in the ‶Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,″ vol. xxii. p. 385. There he mentions having obtained at Ardross specimens of Dithyrocaris and Palæocrangon. The former occurs as detached valves, but with no trace of the body segments, except the triply divided tail spine, of which two or three specimens have been obtained. The genus Acanthocaris, 1 belonging to the order Phyllopoda, was instituted by Mr B. N. Peach for the reception of certain forms of Carboniferous Crustacea which are nearly