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These documents have been scanned by the GA Library. Please refer to the document for contents.

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

In several publications which have appeared during the last few years mention was made of Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian and Tithonian) and Lower Cretaceous (Neocomian and Aptian) marine fossils from Dampier Land, a peninsula which lies between the townships of Derby and Broome in the north of Western Australia. The fossils were listed in detail or otherwise mentioned in more or less preliminary stratigraphical descriptions of the area in papers by Brunnschweiler (1951a, 1951 b, 1954, 1957), Guppy (1953), Guppy, Lindner, Rattigan, & Casey (1958), and Fairbridge (1953). A great deal of geological work has been carried out since those preliminary exploration activities, chiefly by the staff of the West Australian Petroleum Pty Ltd (WAPET). The currently accepted stratigraphical picture has recently been presented by McWhae, Playford, Lindner, Glenister, & Balme (1958), and the reader is referred to this paper for the overall situation and the relationships of the formations mentioned in the present descriptions of the fossils. The occurrence of Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous formations in this region has been known for many years, but only in recent years have the nature and extent of the sequences become known in reasonable detail. The only description of Upper Jurassic fossils of this area is found in a short paper by Teichert (1940a). Unfortunately several of the fossil specimens described hereafter were lost in the fire in the Canberra offices of the Bureau of Mineral Resources in April, 1953. The illustrations on plates I and II had to be made up from discoloured and singed photographs, the negatives of which did not survive the fire. Mostly," open" nomenclature is applied even where an obviously new form is in evidence; for new species can only be established where satisfactory type material is still available. The main purpose of this paper is to substantiate earlier statements by showing what fossils have been found, even though this can only be done with the help of photographs which luckily escaped destruction by the fire. Much of the work for this paper was done before mid-1954, when the writer was still a member of the staff of the Bureau of Mineral Resources, and engaged in work on the stratigraphy and palaeontology of the Australian Mesozoic.