Graptolite Centenary, 1829–1929

Abstract

IT was in 1829 that Adolphe Brongniart first described ‘graptolites’, two of them, and both from the black carbonaceous shales of the Point Levis cliffs opposite the city of Quebec, Canada. Brongniart was a botanist, and although graptolites are marine animals of the hydroid type, these two forms went the rounds of the different museums of natural history in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and at last were described in the Prodrome for 1829 as plants. Plants they do certainly appear to resemble, giving leaf-like expansions, venations, moss-like characters, etc., all of which led early paheontologists to ascribe generic and specific names to the graptolites they described—Phyllograptus angustifolius, Dipl. folium, Tetragr. bryonoides, etc.