Abstract
The lenticular outcrop of a fossiliferous channel fill is exposed in the Paleozoic section at Beartooth Butte. It lies unconformably above the Ordovician Bighorn dolomite and below the Devonian Jefferson limestone, and consists chiefly of massive gray limestones and thin red shales. The fossil remains, both faunal and floral, indicate Lower Devonian age. The fauna comprises twenty-nine species of ostracoderms, arthrodires, elasmobranchs, and a dipnoan, in addition to large eurypterid. The flora consists of five species of the most primitive terrestrial plants, the psilophytales. Both paleontologi-cally and stratigraphically the channel deposit is regarded as a new unit in the Paleozoic system of the central Rocky Mountains, so it is named the Beartooth Butte formation. Available evidence shows that it was deposited in relatively quiet water probably in a drowned river valley or estuary.
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