Rudist bivalves in Jamaica: from Barrett and Sawkins to Chubb Simon F. Mitchell and Sherene James-Williamson Department of Geography and Geology, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica. The Discovery of Rudists in Jamaica Rudist bivalves were discovered in Jamaica early during the First Geological Survey, a survey commissioned by the Colonial Government in Jamaica and the Home Government in London that was undertaken to determine the economic mineral resources of the island. The director of the survey, Mr. Lucas Barrett, and his assisitant, James Gay Sawkins, began their survey in St. Thomas in the East (now the Parish of St. Thomas), and in the banks of the Plantain Garden River, some 3 miles west of Bath, they discovered several thin limestones that contained specimens of Cretaceous fossils included hippurites (not Barrettia, as is often stated, but rudists sensu lato, since the a e hippu ites as at that ti e used fo ost rudists), Inoceramus and Nerinaea, and demonstrated that these rocks were of Cretaceous age (Barrett, 1860). The founder of Jamaican Geology, Sir Henry De la Beche, had formerly mapped the area and had included the rocks in which the rudists were found as the Transition Series which was then attributed to the Palaeozoic (De la Beche, 1827); but even De la Beche (1830) whould admit that this age was based on gross mineralogy and had little value. Yet the notice published in the Quaterly Journal of the Geological Society by da ett as ot the fi st fossil e o d that De la de he s suggestions of age were wrong, for James Gay Sawkins had reported a Cretaceous coral (Caryophyllia centralis) in rocks below the so-called Coal Measures several years before (Sawkins, 1856). After mapping St. Thomas in the East, Barrett and Sawkins split up – Sawkins would survey the eastern part of the parish of Portland, whilst Barrett would survey the western part of the same parish. It was Barrett, whilst exploring the western area of the Back River (Back Rio Grande) who discovered a limestone in January 1861 with the remarkable fossil that once transported back to England, and investigated by S. P. Woodward (1862; Figure 1), would be described as Barrettia monilifera (the generic name Barrettia was taken from Barrett, although apparently much to his dislike: Annonymous, 1863). Barrett died at the end of 1862 in a diving accident and Sawkins was promoted to Director of the Survey. The Director of the Geological Survey for the survey of Trinidad which was undertaken before that of Jamaica, George Parks Wall, was in Jamaica (probably involved with the Jamaican copper mining companies), and was temporarily employed in the position of Assistant Geologist. Wall had made extensive collections of corals (Duncan and Wall, 1865) and rudists (Chubb, 1980) in Clarendon, and upon leaving Jamaica he took these specimens back to London where they were lodged in the British Museum. Sawkins, together with his assistants – George Parks Wall, Arthur Lennox, and Charles Barrington Brown – were also to make collections of fossils including rudists, but lack of resources in the colony of Jamaica and/or from the Colonial Office in London meant that none of these specimens was ever sent to London (Sawkins and Brown, 1867). These specimens, which were subsequently referred to as the Sawkins and Brown collection , were used to establish a Geological Museum in Spanish Town in 1866 or 1867, and in 1879, with other collections, went to form the nucleus of the Institue of Jamaica (Kaplan, 1996). Figure 1. The original cross-section of Barrettia monilifera Woodward (1862, plate II, fig. 5). This section (which can no longer be traced) shows the two pillars, the posterior myophore fitting into a socket, and the two teeth fitting into slots. Mitchell (2010, fig. 6B) illustrated an almost identical specimen from the type locality. 1 Figure 2. Charles Taylor Trechmann (1885-1964) from a photograph in the University of the West Indies Geology Museum (date unknown). Trechmann collected and described the rudists of Jamaica and produced two important papers in 1922 and 1924. New Rudist Localities: Logie Green and Green Island Follo i g the “a ki s su e , udist i al es ould receive virtually no interest in Jamaica for the next 30 years. The construction of roads in the late 1890s, cut through some of the Cretaceous limestones, and rudist specimens found their way to the Institute of Jamaica, where the curator, Mr. Duerden, who had geological experience, recognized their importance (The Gleaner, th 29 January 1898). Mr. F. Nicholas, from New York, now made collections of the rudists form the Cretaceous rocks (specifically Logie Green, in Clarendon, and Orange Cove, in Hanover). Not being familiar with rudists, Nicholas forwarded his material to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where R. P. Whitfield, the curator, was to work on this material. Whitfield (1897a) described a whole range of rudists: the huge barrel-shaped specimens of Durania, the coiled caprinids, and the small Radiolites. But it was with Barrettia that Whitfield had his greatest problem – he did not think it was a rudist but believed it to be a coral (Whitfield, 1897b). The leading expert on rudists at the time, H. Douvillé (1898), ote a sho t e ie of Whitfield s o k, stating that Barrettia was a rudist, and bemoaning the fact that no sections were given of the other forms. Gentlemen Geologists Another twenty years, or so, would ellapse, during which the Great War saw major loss of life and devastation in Europe, until the next investigations of Jamaican rudists would begin. Charles Taylor Trechmann (Figure 2) was an independently weathly Englishman; his o e had o e f o his fathe s e e t o pa (Donovan, 2010). He spent his summers in England but would travel during the cold winter months. His first trips, associated with the British Society for the Advancement of Science, were to Australia and New Zealand (Evening th Post [New Zealand], 13 November 1914). But in 1921, he began regular visits to the West Indies – Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica; but it was with Jamaica that rudists, as well as other fossils, became important and eventually the geology too. Each trip would see him collecting different areas, or returning to areas that had previously proved productive. Trechmann was a fossil man, and above all he used his fossils to date the rocks: De la Beche had promoted general rock types, Barrett and Sawkins had assigned periods, but it was Trechmann who used Jamaican fossils to try and place Jamaican rock units within European stages. In 1921 he returned to Orange Cove in Hanover to look for Barrettia, but not finding it he found a local man who had seen F. C. Nicholas collecting there 25 years before – the Barrettia location was at Haughton Hall not Orange Cove! His paper redescribing Barrettia (Trechmann, 1922) was published the following year. In 1923, he collected extensive material from Logie Green – ost of Whitfield s described species – but a whole lot more (F. C. Ni holas collections in the American Museum of Natural History contain specimens of all these species, but none were described); now Trechmann describes such distinctive forms as: Biradiolites rudissimus, Biradiolites jamaicensis and Coralliochama radiolitiformis. Trechmann also had travelled extensively through France, Austria and Persia; and the knowledge he had gained of European rudists allowed him to recognize that various Jamaican forms were highly distinctive – in 1924 he named Titanosarcolies, Antillocaprina, and Praebarrettia. In 1924, Charles Aldred Matley arrived in Jamaica to begin the Second Government Geological Survey – this time it was for water rather than for mineral resources. Sawkins (1869) had recorded a mineral sp i g i “t. A s G eat River and so Matley now studied this spring. In doing so, he discovered that it was seeping methane and suggested the presence of petroleum underneath. Although Matle s su e as to be short-lived, he made a rapid investigation of the Cretaceous rocks in St. Ann before he left Jamaica; here he found a Cretaceous limestone from which Trechmann identified Maastrichtian rudists. 2 Figure 3. Lawrence John Chubb, reproduced from the Journal of the Geological Society, volume 13, photograph facing p. 2. The Third Geologi al Sur ey a d Chu ’s Rudists The Second World War would intervene before the resumption of studies on rudist bivalves. Professor Verners A. Zans was selected to head the new Geological Survey and arrived in Jamaica in October of th 1949. On the 10 of January 1950, Dr. Lawrence John Chubb (Figure 3), aged 62, and his wife arrived in Jamaica on Sabbatical leave from University College London, with thoughts of retirement i Ja ai a s th pleasant climate (Robinson, 1973; The Gleaner, 11 January 1950). This was not to be, and later that same year he was appointed as Geologist in the new Geological Survey. Chubb now took on the task of trying to make sense of the Jamaican Cretaceous with its limestones full of rudists. He began by studying specimens preserved in the useu at the I stitute of Ja ai a, Whitfield s t pe specimens preserved in the American Museum of Natural History, the Matley and Stephenson Collections at the United States National Museum, and the Barrett, Trechmann and Woodward Collections in the British Museum of Natural History (Chubb, 1955a). As mapping of Jamaica progressed, collections of fossils were also made by the mapping geologists and worked on by Chubb. Chubb s first paper on rudists was a revision of Whitfield s Jamaican species (Chubb, 1955a). Following this, he described a range of rare or unusual specimens from Jamaica (Chubb, 1956a, b) and extended his ideas to other Caribbean islands (Chubb, 1956c). Chubb also brought to Jamaica his knowledge of the Geologists Association and of publicizing geology. In 1955, Chubb, together with other Survey geologists, other professional geologists, and various interested amateurs, formed the Jamaica Group of the Geologists Association. The augural meeting was th held on Friday the 7 of October, and Lawrence Chubb was elected the first Chairman (The Gleaner, th 10 October 1955). The International Geological Congress was held in Mexico in September 1956, and this provided Chubb with an opportunity to visit Mexico. Following the Congress, Chubb examined the succession in Chiapas where he made rudist collections and redescribed the succession (Chubb, 1959). In 1957 Chubb became Deputy Director of the Geological Survey. Because of his knowledge of rudists, Chubb also received collections of specimens from geologists working elsewhere in the Caribbean. Peter H. Matson was mapping south-western Puerto Rico, and sent his material to Chubb for identification. Chu s identifications were critical for assigning ages to the rocks of Puerto Rico, although too few rudists were sent to Jamaica to accurately assign ages to all of the limestone units. From St. Croix, Chubb received rudists from the Judith Fancy Formation collected by John T. Whetten; this was an interesting assemblage for Chubb, Barrettia with Titanosarcolites occurring together! This was something that he had argued with Trechmann about many times, Chubb maintained that Barrettia and Titanosarcolites had separate ranges indicating the Campanian and Maastrichtian, repectively; whereas Trechmann reported that he had found them together in the Stapleton Limestone in the Sunderland Inlier of western Jamaica (Chubb, 1955b; Trechmann, 1960). Chu s o e t i luded i Whette s thesis as that the occurrence of Barrettia and Titanosarcolites togethe ight i di ate a se ies of passage eds between the Campanian and Maastrichtian. But in Chubb s op of Whette s (1961) thesis he wrote Whe I rote this I did not realize that the fossils came from a conglomerate and were therefore probably re orked. At the Annual General Meeting of the Jamaica Group of the Geologists Asso iatio i , it as de ided to eak the li k ith the Geologists Asso iatio ‘obinson, 1980). At the start of 1860, the Geological Society of Jamaica was born, with a new constitution, and Lawrence Chubb as the first president. The following year, Chubb resigned as president at the age of 73. 3 Following the sudden death of Verners Zans from a th heart attack on the 5 of September, 1961, Chubb was promoted to the position of acting Director of the Geological Survey (Chubb and Williams, 1961). In 1963, Lawrence Chubb retired from the Geological Survey and became a Research Associate in the newly formed Department of Geology at the University of the West Indies. But the following year his wife died and he returned to England. His return to England was not what he expected, and he decided he liked Jamaica. He returned to Jamaica and became an Honouray Consultant in the Department of Geology at the University. It was here that he worked on his monograph of Jamaican rudists, but work was slow. By 1967, new work was progressing on the Cretaceous of Jamaica. Henry Mac Gillavry, who had published on the Cuban rudists in 1937, had a new set of students (H. van Dommelen and Jan Krijnen) working in the Caribbean. The group visited Jamaica in 1967 he e the et ith Chu . Chu s o og aph as still not complete, and so he submitted brief descriptions of the new species to the Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica – the article was published in 1968 (Jung, 1970). Th ee o e ea s e e to pass efo e fi all Chu s monograph Rudists of Jamaica would appear in print th (Figure 4). Its date of publication is given as the 17 of September, 1971, and in it he describes 71 species from Jamaica. Two other important monographs on Caribbean rudists also appeared the same year: Gloria Alencáster de Cse a s Rudistas del cretacico superior de Chiapas, and H. van Dommelen s Ontogenetic, phylogenetic and taxonomic studies of the American species of Pseudovaccinities and of Torreites and the multiple-fold Hippuritids. th Lawrence Chubb died on the 12 of October, 1971, less than a month after the publication of his monograph. There is no copy of his monograph in the Lawrence Chubb Papers in the West Indies Collection of the University of the West Indies Science Library, nor, for that matter are there copies of the other two works published the same year (Donovan, 1988). Lawrence Chubb lived to see his work published, but probably never saw a copy of the final printed version. Figure 4. Cover of Chubb s monograph Rudists of Jamaica published on the 17th of Spetember 1971; Chubb died on the 12th of October 1971 less than a month after its publication. Annonymous. 1863. The Popular Science Review, 2 (1863), Robert Hardwicke, London, pp. 428-431. Barrett, L. 1860. On some Cretaceous Rocks in the SouthEastern Portion of Jamaica. Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London, 16, 324-326. Chubb, L.J. 1955a. A revision of Whitfield's type specimens of the rudist mollusks from the Cretaceous of Jamaica, B. W. I. American Museum Novitates, No. 1713, 1-15. Chubb, L.J. 1955b. The Cretaceous succession in Jamaica. Geological Magazine, 92, 177-195. Chubb, L.J. 1956a. Thyrastylon, a new rudist genus from the Upper Cretaceous of Guatemala, the Antilles, and Persia, with a discussion of the function of rudist oscules and pillars. Palaeontographica Americana, 4, No. 27, 3349. Acknowledgements. We thank Richard Coutou for reviewing this manuscript and making valuable suggestions for Chubb, L.J. 1956b. Two rare rudists from Jamaica, B. W. I. Palaeontographica Americana, 4, 1-30. improvements. Chubb, L.J. 1956c. Rudist assemblages of the Antillean Upper Cretaceous. Bulletins of American Paleontology, 37, References 5-31. Alencàster, G. 1971. Rudistas del Cretácico superior de Chubb, L.J. 1959. Upper Cretaceous of central Chiapas, Chiapas, parte I. Paleontología mexicana, 34, 1 91. Mexico. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum 4 Geologists, 43, 725-756. Chubb, L.J. 1968 (dated 1967). New rudist species from the Cretaceous rocks of Jamaica. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica, 9, 24-31. Chubb, L.J. 1980. The Wall collection of Jamaican Cretaceous Mollusca in the British Museum (Natural History). Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica, 19, 52-53. Chubb, L.J. 1971. Rudists of Jamaica. Palaeontographica Americana, 7, 161-257. Chubb, L.J. and Williams J.B. 1961. Zans memorial issue. Geonotes, 4(3-4), 1-39. De la Beche, H.T. 1827. Remarks on the geology of Jamaica. Transactions of the Geological Society of London, Ser. 2, v. 2, 143–194. De la Beche, H.T. 1830. Sections & views, illustrative of geological phaenomena, 71 pp., 40 pls., Treuttel & Ẅrtz, London. Donovan, S.K. 1988. A catalogue of L. J. Chubb's collection of rudist bivalve papers. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica, 24, 8-14. Donovan, S.K. 2010. Three points of view: Wendell P. Woodring (1891-1983), Charles A. Matley (1866-1947), Charles T. Trechmann (1884-1964), and Jamaican geology in the 1920s and 1930s. In: Donovan, S.K. (Ed.), Jamaican rock stars, 1823-1971: the geologists who explored Jamaica, Geological Society of America Memoir 205, 59-78. Douvillé, M. H. 1898. Les Rudistes de la Jamaïque, par R. P. Whitfield. Revue Critique Paleozoologie, II, 122-125, Paris. Duncan, M.B. and Wall, G.P. 1865. A notice of the geology of Jamaica, especially with reference to the district of Clarendon; with descriptions of the Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene corals of the islands. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 21, 1-15. Jung, P. 1970. Torreites sanchezi (Douvillé) from Jamaica. Palaeontographica Americana, 7, 1-13. Kaplan, F.E.S. 1996. Museums and the making of "ourselves": the role of objects in national identity, 430 pp., Leicester University Press. Mac Gillavry, H.J. 1937. Geology of the Province of Camaguey, Cuba with revisional studies in rudist paleontology (mainly based upon collections from Cuba). Geographische en Geologische Mededeelingen, Utrecht 14, 1-168. Matson, P.H. 1960. Geology of the Mayagüez area, Puerto Rico. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 71, 319-362. Mitchell, S.F. 2010. Revision of three large species of Barrettia from Jamaica. Caribbean Journal of Earth Science, 41, 1-16. Robinson, E. 1973. Lawrence John Chubb, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.G.S. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica, 13, 1-5. Robinson, E. 1980. The Geological Society of Jamaica – its history. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica, 19, 54-58. Sawkins, J.G. 1856. Report. To the directors of the Rio Grande Mining Company. The Transactions of the Jamaica Society of Arts, 1, 41. Sawkins, J.G. 1869. Reports on the geology of Jamaica; or, Part II of the West Indian Survey, Memoirs of the Geological Survey, 339 pp., Longmans, Green & Co., London. Sawkins J.G. and Brown, C.B. 1867. Letter to Grant, dated 25th April 1867, Enclosed with letter to Murchison dated 13th June 1867, Murchison Letters, 1865-1867, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham. Trechmann, C.T. 1922. The Barrettia beds of Jamaica. Geological Magazine, 59, 501-514, London. Trechmann, C.T. 1924. The Cretaceous limestones of Jamaica and their Mollusca. Geological Magazine, 61, 25410. Trechmann, C.T. 1960. What I think of the 1958 Geological Survey Map of Jamaica. Geonotes, 3, 111-113. van Dommelen, H. 1971. Ontogenetic, phylogenetic and taxonomic studies on the American species of Pseudovaccinites and of Torreites, and the multiple-fold hippuritids. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 125 pp. Whetten, J.T. 1961. Geology of St. Croix U.S. Virgin Islands. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton University, New Jersey, 102 pp. Whitfield, R.P. 1897a. Observations on the genus Barrettia Woodward, with descriptions of two new species. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 9, 233-246, New York, N.Y. Whitfield, R.P. 1897b. Descriptions of species of Rudistae from the Cretaceous rocks of Jamaica. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 9, 185-196, New York, N.Y. Woodward, S.P. 1862. Some account of Barrettia, a new and remarkable fossil shell from the hippurite limestone of Jamaica. The Geologist: a Popular Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Geology, V (October 1862), 372-377, pl. XXXXI, London. Mitchell, S.F., and James-Williamson, S. 2011. Rudist bivalves in Jamaica: from Barrett and Sawkins to Chubb. In S.F. Mitchell (Ed.), The Ninth International Congress on Rudist Bivalves 18th to 25th June 2011, Kingston, Jamaica, Abstracts, Articles and Field Guides. UWI Mona Contributions to Geology #6, 1-5. 5