Discovery of amphibians in the Namurian (Upper Carboniferous) of Fife

Abstract

CARBONIFEROUS amphibians are very rare as fossils and almost all major finds of British specimens were made in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, knowledge of Carboniferous tetrapods, both amphibians and reptiles, has expanded considerably in recent years^1,2. All are from Europe or North America and most are from horizons equivalent to or later than the British Coal Measures (Westphalian and Stephanian, respectively). Far fewer amphibians are known from the Lower Carboniferous and knowledge of the Namurian tetrapod fauna, between the Lower Carboniferous and the Coal Measures, is even more meagre. With the exception of a single incomplete anthracosaur amphibian from the Namurian of the Ruhr, Germany³, pre-Coal Measure amphibia are known from only three areas (1) West Virginia and south-western Pennsylvania in the United States^4,5; (2) Nova Scotia, Canada⁶, and (3) the Edinburgh area and southern Fife in Scotland^7,8. In November 1974, however, fossil amphibian and fish remains were discovered at the Dora Opencast Site (area C), south-east of Cowdenbeath, Fife (Fig. 1), in Carboniferous strata of Namurian age. The richly fossiliferous bone bed at Cowdenbeath formed a localised patch in a seatrock (rooty, muddy siltstone), which lies beneath a coal seam below the Lochgelly Blackband Ironstone. The Lochgelly Blackband Ironstone itself has also produced a fauna with amphibian remains in the Dora site, while a few specimens have been recovered from strata up to 6 m lower in the sequence.