Abstract

The International Congress at Copenhagen in 1960 expressed the wish to see a revision of the Couvinian at the type section at Couvin. The present paper summarizes the essential results of this work, which will be published in full elsewhere.

The lower Couvinian at Couvin marks the beginning of the reefal regime in the Devonian rock sequences of the Ardennes. The establishment of this facies, which expanded progressively in the upper Couvinian to the Frasnian, took place in a series of steps which are particularly well expressed in the sequences of the faunas, which were, for the first time in the Devonian, bathymetrically controlled.

The detailed ecological study of the section was conducted concurrently with a stratigraphical revision, for which conodonts, supplemented by other microfauna, were particularly valuable. This revision allows one to suggest satisfactory correlations with the Couvinian of Western Germany and to discuss the controversial problem of the lower and upper limits of the Couvinian. Certain comparisons are made with the Middle Devonian of the United States.