- Key People:
- William Lonsdale
- Robert Kidston
In New Zealand the Lower Devonian is known in the Reefton and Baton River areas. The brachiopods in the faunal assemblages include European elements and have few typical austral types.
Devonian rocks are known in eastern Australia in a belt from Queensland to Tasmania as part of the Tasman geosyncline. Fluviatile sediments are found to the west. Thicknesses of 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) are known. Leptophloeum is found in the Upper Devonian portion. Devonian rocks occur in central Australia in Lake Amadeus and along the western coast in the Carnarvon, Canning, and Bonaparte Gulf basins. Complex facies changes are known, and the Canning Basin reef complexes show every detail of forereef, reef, and backreef structures exposed by modern erosion.
In the Antarctic both marine and continental Devonian strata occur, the latter rich in fossil fishes of European genera. The marine Lower Devonian shows some affinity with the Bokkeveld in South Africa, which in turn has strong links with South America. No Devonian strata are known in Africa between the Bokkeveld and sections in Ghana and northwestern Africa.
Early Devonian marine rocks are well developed in South America, but the Late Devonian is poorly documented. In the western mountains of the Andes and sub-Andes, Devonian remnants are preserved from southern Chile north to Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. The Devonian rocks of Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil are thought to represent marine transgression from the west. Both continental and marine fossils have been documented. The fauna of the Falkland Islands as well as of the Paraná and Parnaíba basins include many genera of brachiopods and trilobites that are common within the circum-Antarctic region but unknown in the Northern Hemisphere. In Venezuela and Colombia, however, plant, animal, fungus, and microorganism fossils of Appalachian type dominate, although austral elements such as the brachiopod Australospirifer linger.
North America
The Appalachian area of eastern North America shows spectacular and historically famous Devonian rocks that were first described by James Hall in New York state between 1836 and 1855. A source of sand and other clastics in the east provided a flood of sediment from an eastern land area, which formed the Devonian Catskill Delta that filled a broad sedimentary trough. In the area encompassing Ontario, Michigan, and Indiana, early thin calcareous sequences give way to deeper-water marine black shales, which were formed especially in the area of the Great Lakes and south beyond Indiana. The central area of the United States formed a mid-continental rise during the Devonian, and the Devonian rock record there is thin and incomplete. Devonian rocks are well developed in New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and north to Montana, where evaporites in the subsurface are known to extend into Saskatchewan. In the mountainous area of the eastern United States, Devonian rocks are scattered and may have coalesced from separate microcratons or microplates over a long period of time. Very thick sequences of Devonian volcanics are known, for example, in the Sierra Nevada of California. In western Canada, flat-lying Devonian rocks are well known in the subsurface of Saskatchewan, and in Alberta they include oil-bearing Devonian reefs. Devonian reef complexes also occur along the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Involved in the thrusting of the Rockies, they can be seen in Alberta’s Banff and Jasper national parks. In more-scattered outcrops to the east, it would appear that deeper-water facies are represented. Following the discovery of oil in a Devonian reef at Leduc, Alta., much detailed exploration was undertaken. Rocks of Devonian age are widespread from there northward to the Canadian Arctic islands and Alaska. Their faunal assemblages show many similarities with those of Europe.
Correlation of Devonian strata
Most groups of fossil forms contribute to the establishment of a faunal and floral chronology that enables Devonian rocks to be correlated. For the continental deposits, fish and plant spores are most important. The fishes give a very precise zonation in parts of the system. The Baltic Frasnian, for example, can be divided into at least five time zones using psammosteids (Agnatha), thus probably equaling the precision possible for the better-known marine Frasnian sequences. Many problems remain, however, in the correlation of the continental and the marine deposits.
The faunal succession in marine strata has been established for many groups, but only those of significance for international correlations are mentioned here. Traditionally, the goniatites and clymenids (ammonites) form the standard. The succession established first in Germany by the paleontologist Rudolf Wedekind in 1917 has been found to hold for all continents where representatives have been discovered.
Rivaling the ammonites in most parts of the Devonian and useful for defining the divisions of the system are the conodonts. The Late Devonian was characterized by a spectacular evolutionary radiation of Palmatolepis and its relatives.
The brachiopods, although more restricted, are also important. This is particularly true of the spiriferids of the Early Devonian and of the entry and evolution of the cyrtospiriferid types in the Late Devonian. The rhynchonellids also are of great value in the subdivision of the Late Devonian. Some brachiopods, however, show diverse distribution patterns. Stringocephalus, a well-known Middle Devonian guide fossil in the western United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, is entirely absent from the rich New York succession; yet Tropidoleptus, elsewhere confined to the Lower and Middle Devonian, ranges high in the Devonian of New York. Corals also have been used for correlation, but further work suggests they were particularly sensitive to changing local environments and thus are poor time indicators.
Michael R. House