Fritsch's Palæontological Researches

Abstract

THE first part of this admirable work was briefly reviewed in NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 31. It was then observed that the book was almost as interesting to the stratigraphical geologist as to the palæontologist, for the Gaskohle and its superincumbent Kalksteine rest upon Silurian rocks, and are usually not covered by other strata in vertical succession. The coals, clays, and ironstones have a Carboniferous facies, and the conformable limestones are believed to be true Permians. The palæontological evidence regarding the age of the beds is somewhat anomalous in the views of purely British fossilists, but it speaks very forcibly and in a most suggestive manner to the students of the Gondwana formations of Hindustan. The presence of Sigillaria, Stigmaria, Catamites, and Lepidodendra, in the Gaskohle, in association with Permian species of ferns and a Walchia, seems however to place these Bohemian beds on a lower geological horizon than the Gondwana series, which have had their palæobotany studied by the same palæontologist, Feistmantel, who investigated the plantremains of the Permo-Carboniferous of Eastern Europe.

Fauna der Gaskohle und der Kalksteine der Permformation Böhmens.

Von Dr. Ant. Fritsch. Band II., Heft 1, pp. 32, Plates 49–60. (Prague: In Commission bei Fr. Rivac, 1885.)