VIII.— Note On Spathulopteris decomposita (Kidston)

Abstract

The purpose of this note is to place on record the finding of a specimen of Spathulopteris decomposita (Kidston) in the Calciferous Sandstone Series of East Fife. It was obtained by the writer from a bed of sandstone in the cliff section midway between Pittenweem and Anstruther. According to J. W. Kirkby’s detailed table of the strata seen along this part of the East Fife coast, published in the Geological Survey Memoir on East Fife (1902, pp. 77 seq. ), the sandstone bed lies more than 2000 ft. below the Hurlet Limestone. The plant was first described by Kidston in 1883 as Sphenopteris decomposita (Kidston), in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxx, p. 538 and Plate xxxii, Figs. 1, 4 and 5. In Volume II, Part II (1923) of the same author’s “Fossil Plants of the Carboniferous Rocks of Great Britain” it is described and figured under the name of Spathulopteris decomposita (Kidston), page 178, Plate xliii, Fig. 7, and Plate xliv, Figs. 2-4. In the list of plant-remains published in the East Fife memoir (pp. 358-360) Sphenopteris decomposita is not recorded, nor is it mentioned under its present designation. Spathulopteris decomposita (Kidston) has been found at a few localities, but is described as rare and as characteristic of the Oil Shale Group of the Calciferous Sandstone Series. The localities are: Oil Shale Group at West Hermand, West Calder; Wardie Shales near Edinburgh; at Cot Castle, Strathaven, a few fathoms below the Hurlet Limestone; in the River This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract