The Bertie Waterlime - Fossil Ecosystems of North America: A Guide to the Sites and their Extraordinary Biotas - page 63

abundant remains of unusual animals and
land plants, indicating an input from
nearby rivers. At the very end of the
Silurian Period in New York, the Rondout
Group marks the return to more normal
marine salinities and fossils similar to
those of the mid-Silurian.
The paleobiologic importance of the
Bertie Waterlime lies in its abundance of
well-preserved remains of eurypterids and
other unusual arthropods. Eurypterids
belong to the arthropod subphylum
Chelicerata, which also contains horseshoe
crabs, spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks,
harvest-spiders, and other arachnids. They
are united in their possession of a
characteristic pair of pincers (chelicerae)
as the first pair of appendages. Eurypterids
arose in the Ordovician and died out in the
Permian; some reached some 2 m (6.6 ft)
or more in length, and they were
predatory. Thus, they were the largest
arthropods that ever lived, and were the
top predators on Earth for some 100
million years!

Through the nineteenth century,
masses of Eurypterus were collected from
the extensive waterlime quarries and
deposited in the museums of New York
State. Indeed, apart from a similar fauna of
the same age from Kokomo, Indiana, no
eurypterids were found in the US outside
the state of New York until the twentieth
century. Because of the abundance of
these beautiful fossils in the Bertie
Waterlime of New York, the species
Eurypterus remipes was designated as the
state fossil in June 1984.

S TRATIGRAPHIC SETTING AND
TAPHONOMY OF THE B ERTIE
W ATERLIME
The Bertie Group was formerly included
within the Salina Group (e.g. Rickard,
1975), but is now generally separated. The
Salina Group ( 65 ) consists primarily of
thick red-beds (Vernon and Bloomsburg
formations), evaporites, limestones, and
dolostones (Syracuse Formation), with an
upper, thick sequence of shales with
dolomitic mudstones and evaporites
(Camillus Formation). In contrast, the
Bertie Group is a thinner sequence,
consisting of massive dolostones with
intercalated waterlimes, minor shale
and mudstone units, and some evaporites
(Ciurca and Hamell, 1994). Eurypterids
occur in specific horizons within the Salina
Group, such as the Vernon Shales, but are
unknown in the Camillus Formation.
The Bertie Group overlying the Salina
has some massive dolostone horizons
which are good waterfall-formers, e.g.
Indian Falls, just west of NY77 ( 66 ) and the
falls at Williamsville, near Buffalo. The
name Bertie was coined by Chapman
(1864) for rocks in the neighborhood of
the town of Bertie in the Niagara
Peninsula, Ontario. Judging from the
thickness given by Chapman, he must
have included the strata all the way up to
the basal Devonian unconformity in the
Bertie (Ciurca and Hamell, 1994),
whereas more recently, the Akron
Formation and its equivalent Cobleskill
Formation to the east have been included

H ISTORY OF DISCOVERY OF THE
B ERTIE W ATERLIME
The first eurypterid ever to be mentioned
in the literature was found near
Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York,
and was described as a catfish of the genus
Silurus (Mitchill, 1818). Mitchill thought
that the prominent swimming paddles
were barbels arising from near the mouth.
James DeKay (1825) recognized the
arthropod nature of the fossil and named it
Eurypterus remipes . He thought it
belonged to the Crustacea. Eurypterus
lacustris , the common eurypterid in the
western part of New York, was discovered
soon after, by Richard Harlan (1835). It
was more than 20 years later that the first
complete eurypterid was discovered
outside New York, in Estonia by
Nieszkowski (1858, 1859). He considered
this species, now known as Eurypterus
tetragonophthalmus , to be so like the New
York E. remipes that he placed it in the
same species.