A century of science in America

by Unknown

Between 1830 and 1835 Morton published a series of papers in the Journal under the title “Synopsis of the Organic Remains of the Ferruginous Sand Formation of the United States, with Geological Remarks” (17, 274, et seq.). In these he describes the Cretaceous fossils and demonstrates that the “Diluvial” and Tertiary strata of the Atlantic border also have a long sequence of Cretaceous formations. In the opening paper he writes: “I consider the marl of New Jersey as referable to the great ferruginous sand series, which in Prof. Buckland’s arrangement is designated by the name of green sand.... On the continent this series is called the ancient chalk ... lower chalk,” etc. Again, the marls of New Jersey are “geologically equivalent to those beds which in Europe are interposed between the white chalk and the Oölites.” This correlation is with the European Lower Cretaceous, but we now know the marls to be of Upper Cretaceous age. Although Eaton objected strenuously to Morton’s correlation, we find M. Dufresnoy of France saying, “Your limestone above green sand reminds me very much of the Mæstricht beds,” a correlation which stands to this day (22, 94, 1832). In 1833 Morton announces that the Cretaceous is known all along the Atlantic and Gulf border, and in the Mississippi valley. “The same species of fossils are found throughout,” and none of them are known in the Tertiary. He now arranges the strata of the former “Alluvial” as follows:

Modern	Alluvial.
	Diluvial.
Tertiary	Upper Tertiary (Upper Marine).
	Middle Tertiary (London Clay).
	Lower Tertiary (Plastic Clay).
Secondary	Calcareous Strata	Cretaceous group, or Ferruginous Sand series (24, 128).
	Ferruginous Sand

Western Cretaceous.—In 1841 and 1843 J. N. Nicollet announced the discovery of Cretaceous in the Rocky Mountain area. Of 20 species of fossils collected by him, 4 were said to occur on the Atlantic border, and of the 200 forms of the Atlantic slope only 1 was found in Europe. Here we see pointed out a specific dissimilarity between the continents, and a similarity between the American areas of Cretaceous deposits (41, 181; 45, 153).

The Cretaceous of the Rocky Mountains was clearly developed by F. V. Hayden in 1855–1888 and by F. B. Meek (1857–1876). Other workers in this field were Charles A. White (1869–1891), and R. P. Whitfield (1877–1889). Since 1891 T. W. Stanton has been actively interpreting its stratigraphy and faunas.

Cretaceous and Comanche of Texas.—The broader outlines of the Cretaceous of Texas had been described by Ferdinand Roemer in 1852 in his good work, Kreidebildungen von Texas, but it was not until 1887 that Robert T. Hill showed in the Journal (33, 291) that it included two great series, the Gulf series, or what we now call Upper Cretaceous, and a new one, the Comanche series. This was a very important step in the right direction. Since then the Comanche series has been regarded by some stratigraphers as of period value, while others call it Lower Cretaceous; the rest of the Texas Cretaceous is divided by Hill into Middle and Upper Cretaceous. On the other hand, Lower Cretaceous strata had been proved even earlier in the state of California, for here in 1869 W. M. Gabb (1839–1878) and J. D. Whitney (1819–1896) had defined their Shasta group, which was wholly distinct faunally from the Comanche of Texas and the southern part of the Great Plains country.

Jurassic and Triassic of the West.—In 1864, the Geological Survey of California proved the presence of marine Upper Triassic in that State, and since then it has been shown that not only is all of the Triassic present in Idaho (where it has been known since 1877), Oregon, Nevada, and California, but that the Upper Triassic is of very wide distribution throughout western North America. Jurassic strata, on the other hand, were not shown to be present in California until 1885, while in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States there was long known an unresolved series of “Red Beds” situated between the Carboniferous and Cretaceous. This gave rise to the “Red Bed problem,” the history of which is given by C. A. White in the Journal (17, 214, 1879). In 1869, F. V. Hayden announced the discovery of marine Jurassic fossils in this series, and since then they have come to be known as the Sundance fauna, extending from southern Utah and Colorado into Alaska. Above lie the dinosaur-bearing fresh-water deposits, since 1894 known as the Morrison beds. In 1896, O. C. Marsh (1831–1899) announced the presence of Jurassic fresh-water strata along the Atlantic coast (2, 433), but to-day only a small part of them are regarded as of the age of the Morrison, while the far greater part are referred to the Comanche or Lower Cretaceous. The red beds below the Jurassic of the Rocky Mountain area have during the past twenty years been shown to be in part of Upper Triassic age and of fresh-water origin, while the greater lower part is connected with the Carboniferous series and is made up of brackish— and fresh-water deposits of probable Permian time.

Triassic of Atlantic States.—The fresh-water Triassic of the Atlantic border states was first mentioned by Maclure (1817), who regarded it as the equivalent of the Old Red Sandstone of Europe. In this he was followed by Hitchcock in 1823 (6, 39), the latter saying that above it lies “the coal formation,” which is true for Europe, but in America the coal strata are older than these red beds, now known to be of Triassic age.

The first one to question this correlation was Alexandre Brongniart, who had received from Hitchcock rock specimens and a fossil fish which he erroneously identified with a Permian species, and accordingly referred the strata to the Permian (3, 220, 1821; 6, 76, pl. 9, figs. 1, 2, 1823). The discerning Professor Finch in 1826 remarked that the red beds of Connecticut appear to belong “to the new or variegated sandstone,” because of eight different criteria that he mentions. Of these, but two are of value in correlation, their “geological position” and the presence of bones other than fishes. In the Connecticut area, however, the geological position cannot be determined even to-day, and in Finch’s time the bones of dinosaurs were unknown. Finch then goes on to point out the occurrences of Old Red Sandstone in Pennsylvania, but all of the places he refers to are either younger or older in time. Here we again see the fatality of trying to make positive correlations on the basis of lithology and color (10, 209, 1826). In 1835, however, Hitchcock showed that the bones that had been found in 1820 were those of a saurian, and accordingly referred the strata of the Connecticut valley to the New Red Sandstone, a term that then covered both the Permian and the Triassic. In 1842, W. B. Rogers referred the beds to the Jurassic, on the basis of plants from Virginia. In 1856, W. C. Redfield (1789–1857), because of the fishes, advocated a Lias, or Jurassic age, and proposed the name Newark group for all the Triassic deposits of the Atlantic border. More recently, on the basis of the plants studied by Newberry, Fontaine, Sturr, and Ward, and the vertebrates described by Marsh and Lull, the age has been definitely fixed as Upper Triassic (see Dana’s Manual of Geology, 740, 1895).

Unearthing of the Paleozoic in North America.

Permian of the United States.—In Europe, previous to 1841, the formations now classed as Permian were included in the New Red Sandstone, and with the Carboniferous were referred to the Secondary. In that year Murchison proposed the period term Permian. In 1845 came the classic Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, by Murchison, Keyserling, and De Verneuil. In this great work the authors separated out of the New Red the Magnesian Limestone of Great Britain and the Rothliegende marls, Kupferschiefer, and Zechstein of Germany, and with other formations of the Urals in Russia, referred them to the Permian system. This step, one of the most discerning in historical geology, was all the more important because they closed the Paleozoic era with the Permian, beginning the Secondary, or Mesozoic, with the New Red Sandstone or the Triassic period. There is a good review of this work by D. D. Owen (1807–1860) in the Journal for 1847 (3, 153).