The Red Island Road Formation: Early Devonian terrestrial fill in the Anticosti Foreland Basin, western Newfoundland

More than 100 m of nearly flat-lying, fluvially derived, thick-bedded and lensoid, clast-supported conglomerate and sandstone are found on Red Island, off the coast of the Port au Port Peninsula, western Newfoundland. Formally described herein and named Red Island Road Formation, the strata represent a unique lithologic formation not exposed or known anywhere else in the region. Characteristic features include abundant, rounded, highly weathered and varnished cobbles and boulders derived from an unknown mixed volcanic and very low to low-grade metamorphic terrane. Although the unit is largely unfossiliferous, a thin sandstone bed near the top of the type section contains primitive dichotomously branched plant remains and biostratigraphically significant palynomorphs. Among more than 25 species of spores, it is the diversity of Emphanisporites, Dictyotriletes, and Dibolisporites, and in particular Dibolisporites echinaceus, Dictyotriletes canadensis, Emphanisporites annulatus, E. erraticus, and E. schultzi...