Where: Scotland, United Kingdom (56.2° N, 3.0° W: paleocoordinates 4.1° N, 8.0° E)

• coordinate estimated from map

When: Westphalian C to Westphalian C (314.6 - 307.5 Ma)

• Binney & Kirkby (1882) recorded a detailed succession of 288.7 m of Barren Red Measures in this area. Kirkby (1888) records a marine band about 11 m below the red beds that is Skipsey’s Marine Band (Knox 1954). According to Woodward the cockroach specimen was found in Binney & Kirkby’s Bed 33 (0.6 m of grey and purple shale with plants), however Kirkby (1888, p.754) indicates the specimen came from a horizon with eurypterids and xiphosurans, which would be the basal 20 cm of Bed 28 (3.2 m of purple, red and greenish shale with plants, fish and arthropods), which lies 2 m above Bed 33. The base of Bed 33 lies about 159 m above the Aegiranum (Skipsey’s) Marine Band, so the specimen is from the Upper Coal Measures and is Westphalian C/D in age.

Environment/lithology: mire or swamp; lithified shale

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: mold/impression

Collection methods: Repository: collection of J.W. Kirkby, Esq. Much of James Kirkby’s collection went to the Hancock Museum, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but this specimen has not been found in the collection there (Ross, 2010).

Primary reference: H. Woodward. 1887. Some new British Carboniferous cockroaches. The Geological Magazine, New Series, Decade III 4:49-58 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 127540: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Lindy Edwards on 17.05.2012

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)