Notice of a shrimp-bearing limestone in the Calciferous Sandstone Series at Granton, near Edinburgh

Abstract

In the year 1903 at Cheese Bay, two miles north-east of Gullane, and eighteen miles east-north-east of Granton, the late Mr A. Macconochie found shrimps in an impure limestone or cementstone in great abundance and beautiful preservation, and accompanied by the remains of plants and estuarine types of fishes. The Crustacea from it were figured and described by Dr Peach in his “ Monograph on the Higher Crustacea of the Carboniferous Rocks of Scotland.” 1 The fishes form the subject of a paper by Dr R. Traquair,2 and the plants were determined by Dr Kidston. An account of this bed is also given in the Geological Survey Memoir on the Geology of East Lothian , pp. 215-217, 1910. This fossil locality has become widely known and has been visited by many collectors. When it became difficult to obtain specimens at Gullane, collectors turned their attention to the shore section at Wardie and Granton, as, on palaeontological and stratigraphical grounds, the Gullane Shrimp Bed was thought to be on the horizon of the Wardie Shales. A few years ago Mr W. Manson and the late Mr J. D. Bowie, then draughtsmen in the Geological Survey Office, found imperfect specimens of these fossils in loose limestone blocks on the shore just west of Granton “ Sea ” Quarry, to which their attention had been attracted by the lithological resemblance to the Shrimp Bed of Gullane. In July 1919 this limestone was found in situ by the author farther to the west. It is