On the Zones of Marine Fossils in the Calciferous Sandstone Series of Fife

Abstract

T he presence of marine beds in the Calciferous Sandstones of the east of Scotland has been noticed by various authors. The officers of the Geological Survey, for example, draw attention to their occurrence in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh and in East Lothian, in their memoirs of those districts. The Rev. Thomas Brown also gives an account of several beds containing marine fossils in his paper on the Carboniferous strata of Fife; and, more recently, Mr. R. Etheridge, jun., has published a paper, in the Journal of this Society, on the Invertebrate fauna of the rocks of this series in the vicinity of Edinburgh, which includes all the marine species known to him from that district. As supplementary to these and other notices, I propose in this paper to describe the marine beds that I have met with in an examination of the Calciferous Sandstones of the east of Fife. These beds I shall notice in their descending order of position, together with such details of the intermediate measures and fossils as may assist in the attainment of a general idea of the palæontology of the formation. In the east of Fife these rocks form the coast-line from near St. Monan's, on by Fife Ness, to St. Andrew's ; but the most complete section is that exposed at their first outcrop, at a point east of the first-named place to Anstruther, a distance of two miles or more. The strata of this section dip to the west, usually at a high