The earliest tetrapods are known from a handful of Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous localities in Europe, North America, and Australia. All Upper Devonian sites and virtually all Early Carboniferous faunas are regarded as predominantly aquatic and most occur within, or are associated with, wetland habitats. A new mid-Carboniferous (Elvirian, Namurian A) fossil locality in Kentucky preserves the first tetrapod fauna from the eastern portion of the Illinois Basin. Four distinct facies at the locality have yielded vertebrate material. Diverse faunas have been found in an abandoned channel/oxbow facies and a floodplain/lake facies. The abandoned channel/oxbow facies contains Colosteidae, Embolomeri, Rhizodontida, Dipnoi, Xenacanthiformes, Palaeonisciformes, and Gyracanthidae remains. This assemblage is similar to known Mississippian freshwater and brackish-water faunas, providing further evidence of a cosmopolitan tetrapod province during the Mississippian. A different fauna, rich in tetrapods but lacking fish, is associated with granular carbonate masses, rooting structures, and a paleosol in the floodplain/ lake facies. Isolated and associated tetrapod elements from this facies exhibit morphological adaptations that may suggest a fauna of more highly terrestrial vertebrates than previously known from the North American Mississippian.

Abstract Carboniferous rocks are now most extensively preserved in central Scotland, the Borders and the offshore areas east of Scotland. Preservation is patchy and successions are generally thin and incomplete in the offshore areas west of Scotland, the Highlands and Southern Uplands, which all tended to remain positive throughout much of the period. However, Carboniferous cover was formerly much more extensive than at present, as demonstrated by a series of isolated outliers with attenuated successions in the Western Highlands and Islands and the Southern Uplands. Most of the cover in these areas was stripped off during the latest Carboniferous uplift and erosion. The basal junction with the Upper Devonian is arbitrary, because it is drawn at the first appearance of calcareous soil profiles (calcretes) within an unfossiliferous fluvial and aeolian succession, but it is usually conformable and coincides with a widespread change to a slightly wetter climate (Paterson et al. 1990; and Chapter 8 ). Progressive overlap took place at various horizons including the early Carboniferous, the base of the Namurian and the Early Westphalian. Figure 9.1 shows Scotland and the adjacent offshore areas, with onshore Carboniferous outcrops, major structures and the principal localities mentioned in the text, and Figure 9.2 shows the onshore outcrops in central and southern Scotland in greater detail. Preserved Carboniferous strata tend to be thin in the west and thickest in the east, with thickening in local basins (Browne et al. 1985). Figure 9.3 shows the chrono- and lithostratigraphical divisions