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THE ARKANSAS COAL MEASURES.
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U. S. Geological Survey, from the Eureka district, Nevada, where a Waverly fauna occurs 3000 feet above the base of the Carboniferous formation. The same thing has been observed by the writer in the Carboniferous of Shasta county, California.

The Lower Carboniferous limestones can be traced all through the west and the Mississippi Valley, to the base of the Appalachian Mountains, where they are replaced by conglomerates and other coarse sediments.

Upper Carboniferous in the West.—Of the Upper Carboniferous all that we know west of Indian Territory takes on a decidedly marine character, containing thick beds of limestones.

There are however some thin beds of coal in Texas, and some carbonaceous seams with a few land plants in New Mexico and Nevada. The coal in Texas was probably deposited near the southern shore line of the Carboniferous sea, and the carbonaceous seams in the far west probably belong to insular areas.

The fossils described from the Western Carboniferous are all marine, with the slight exception that Walcott[1] mentions a few specimens of pulmonate Gasteropoda, that were found along with brachiopods, corals, and land plants, evidently washed in from a distance, since no terrestrial Carboniferous deposits are known near the Eureka district.

The Pawhuski limestone.—In the eastern part of Indian Territory are found large deposits of coal in the Upper Coal Measures, but further west the same horizon is represented by marine limestone. In 1892 Mr. H. C. Hoover, of the Geological Survey of Arkansas, found at the government lime-kiln, three miles northwest of Pawhuski, Oklahoma Territory, Osage Agency, a bed of massive limestone about 100 feet thick, lying horizontally on heavily bedded sandstones. The limestone is fossiliferous, but the sandstones are not. The fossils collected were placed at my disposal, and on examination they proved to be:

  • Spirifer cameratus Morton.
  • Athyris subtilitia Hall sp.
  • Productus semireticulatus Martin sp.
  1. Mon. VIII., U. S. Geol. Survey, p. 262.