On the Occurrence of a Track and Foot-prints of an Animal in the Potsdam Sandstone of Lower Canada

Abstract

When in England, about eight years since, I exhibited to the Society a specimen, brought by me from Horton, near Windsor, in Nova Scotia‡, which was considered to be the first faint evidence of the existence of reptilian animals, previous to the deposit of the Magnesian Limestone. Various fossils which were brought from the same locality, and others from Windsor, induced Mr. Lonsdale to think that the rocks were of the Triassic period, and M. De Verneuil, who had just returned from Russia with Sir R. Murchison, that they were Permian; but in a subsequent collection, brought by Sir Charles Lyell from the same place, the same palæontologists met with several Carboniferous forms; and Sir C. Lyell's evidences, communicated by him to the Society, left little doubt that the Horton and Windsor beds were of the Carboniferous age. By a subsequent careful examination of the great carboniferous development at the Joggins, on the Bay of Fundy, I satisfied myself that these reptilian traces occurred near the very base of the carboniferous deposit, as the equivalent beds were there found to emerge from beneath 14,700 feet of carboniferous strata. Later discoveries by Dr. King* and Mr. Lea in Pennsylvania give clearer evidences than the Horton specimens of similar facts. On the present occassion I have to place before the Society specimens which, interpreted by Professor Owen, who has had the kindness to examine them, appear to carry traces of the same class of animals still farther down in the series of