A "Permian" Flora from the Pennsylvanian Rocks of Kansas

Near Garnett, east-central Kansas, a thin shale that belongs near the top of the Lansing group, approximately in the middle part of the Kansas Pennsylvanian section, contains a remarkably well-preserved assemblage of land plants, terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates, and marine and terrestrial invertebrates. The flora is so strongly Permian in aspect that some paleobotanists conclude the containing beds must be of Permian age. Occurrence of a disconformity below the fossiliferous shale suggests to some students unfamiliar with the regional setting that the Garnett beds may actually be Permian, and that the apparent stratigraphic position in the Middle Pennsylvanian is due to overlap. An equally untenable hypothesis holds that the upper part of the section now classed as Pennsylvanian might be assigned to the Permian as customarily defined. This paper shows that the fossil-bearing shale is correctly placed in the Lansing group and does not represent a Permian overlap or local channel-filling. The characters of the biota are briefly described, and peculiarities of the flora are interpreted as due to environment factors. The flora is undeniably of "Permian" type, but lived in Pennsylvanian time.