Occurrence of the Oil-Forming Alga Botryococcus in Lignites and Other Tertiary Sediments

Abstract

Certain Paleozoic oil-bearing rocks-boghead coals or torbanites, and others-derive their oil con- tent from the hydrocarbon-producing alga Botryococcus. The same genus produces fatty sediments in modern brackish and fresh-water lakes. It has seemed likely that the organism was important in the Cenozoic also. The appearance is noted here of a number of recently reported Tertiary records of Botryococcus in India and Australia, and the first American Tertiary record, in the organic silt overlying the Brandon lignite, Vermont, is described. Botryococcus microfossils from the Warlands Creek locality, Australia, are very closely comparable