A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological MonumentsLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological Monuments
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
CRETACEOUS ROCKS IN THE UNITED STATES.
If we pass to the American continent, we find in the state of New Jersey a
series of sandy and argillaceous beds wholly unlike our Upper Cretaceous
system; which we can, nevertheless, recognize as referable,
paleontologically, to the same division.
That they were about the same age generally as the European chalk and
greensand, was the conclusion to which Dr. Morton and Mr. Conrad came after
their investigation of the fossils in 1834. The strata consist chiefly of
greensand and green marl, with an overlying coralline limestone of a pale
yellow colour, and the fossils, on the whole, agree most nearly with those
of the upper European series, from the Maestricht beds to the gault
inclusive. I collected sixty shells from the New Jersey deposits in 1841;
five of which were identical with European species--_Ostrea larva_, _O.
vesicularis_, _Gryphaea costata_, _Pecten quinque-costatus_, _Belemnites
mucronatus_. As some of these have the greatest vertical range in Europe,
they might be expected more than any others to recur in distant parts of
the globe. Even where the species are different, the generic forms, such as
the Baculite and certain sections of Ammonites, as also the Inoceramus (see
above, fig. 208.) and other bivalves, have a decidedly cretaceous aspect.
Fifteen out of the sixty shells above alluded to, were regarded by
Professor Forbes as good geographical representatives of well-known
cretaceous fossils of Europe. The correspondence, therefore, is not small,
when we reflect that the part of the United States where these strata occur
is between 3000 and 4000 miles distant from the chalk of Central and
Northern Europe, and that there is a difference of ten degrees in the
latitude of the places compared on opposite sides of the Atlantic.[224-A]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account