The Coal Measures Amphibia of North AmericaMoodie, Roy Lee
Science
The Coal Measures Amphibia of North America
Moodie, Roy Lee
Amphibians, Fossil -- North America; Paleontology -- Carboniferous; Paleontology -- North America
"Now as to the question whether some of the Amphibia might have come
from localities in Columbiana County. I believe it very probable that
they did. I walked along the road from Yellow Creek (Jefferson County)
to Wellsville (Columbiana County), a distance of about 2 or 2.5 miles,
and the country seemed quite the same. Everywhere one sees outcrops
of coal in the cuts along the road. Furthermore, I inclose a copy of
a page in an old notebook of Professor Newberry from which you will
see that Coal Measure fossil localities were known not only at Yellow
Creek, but also from near Wellsville. There can be hardly a doubt that
most of the specimens you have are from Yellow Creek; and quite a
number are those collected by Sam Huston."
Newberry says, in regard to the fauna of the Linton Coal:
"The Linton locality is especially interesting and instructive. It
has already (1889) yielded more than 20 species of fishes and nearly
40 species of aquatic amphibians, all inhabitants of the same body
of water. These were found in a thin stratum of cannel which, over
a limited area, underlies a thick bed of cubical coal (No. 6 of the
Ohio reports), of which the place is near the top of the Lower Coal
Measures. At Linton, ... we have evidence that the great marsh in
which the peat accumulated that formed coal No. 6 was for a time a
lake or a lagoon, inhabited by the fishes and amphibians to which I
have referred.... Many of the fishes and the amphibians were highly
carnivorous and powerful, as we learn from their teeth and coprolites.
The largest of the amphibians must have been 8 or 10 feet in length,
having strong jaws, set with numerous lancet-shaped teeth an inch
or more in length.... After a sufficient time had elapsed for many
generations of fishes and aquatic salamanders to live and die, the
lake was filled by the extension of its peaty shores into it just as
so many lakelets are filled and obliterated at the present time and
afterward over the cannel was formed a mass of peat, which has now
become a stratum of cubical coal 7 feet in thickness.
"In the Linton cannel are buried fragments or entire individuals of
all the inhabitants of this body of water which had hard parts, bones,
scales, spines, or teeth, capable of preservation. Hence we get a
locally complete picture of the life of the Carboniferous age, and we
find it to be unexpectedly rich and varied. In that age fishes and
amphibians were the highest forms of animal life, and the amphibians
were comparatively newcomers on the earth's surface. Yet they had
multiplied and differentiated until this little pool contained
millions of them, varying in length from 6 inches to 10 feet and
curiously diversified in their forms, their scales, and spines, and in
the ornamentation of their enamel-covered heads" (498).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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