Notes on the Palæontology of the Wenlock Shales of Shropshire

Abstract

In his presidential address to the Geological Society, Feb., 1881, Mr. Robert Etheridge gave a full synopsis of the then known British Wenlock fauna. The number of genera and species that had been tabulated up to that time were, for 13 groups of fossils, 171 genera and 536 species. He also stated that 58 genera and 125 species were “common to the Wenlock rocks aud the Upper Llandovery: or in other words these 125 species pass up from the Llandovery to the Wenlock formation.”* The geographical distribution of these species include North and South Wales, Westmoreland, Scotland, and Ireland. By far the greater number enumerated are found in the Wenlock limestone series, the debris of which has been so persistently searched for fossils, both by the palaeontological student and by the general dealer in fossil organisms, and the results of their united investigations are by no means surprising. In the Catalogue of Fossils in the School of Mines (1878) the whole of the Cambrian and Silurian fauna are carefully tabulated, stratagraphically, and while the Wenlock limestone fauna occupies twenty-three pages of the catalogue, the fauna of the Wenlock shales, to which attention will be presently directed, are catalogued on ten pages only. In the same presidential address Mr. Etheridge furnished a series of tables of the distribution of species in the different Palaeozoic horizons, which to the student of Stratagraphical Palaeontology is most valuable. The whole of the then known Wenlock shale fauna were included in twelve classes, and are ...