14 THE PERMO-CARBONIFEROUS RED BEDS OF 



Territory gradually assume a red color in the higher portions of the section, the 

 line of transition to this color being diagonal to the strike. The Red Beds of Kansas 

 belong to this phase." 



"In Indian Territory" " and Oklahoma the limestones thin out and disappear 

 from the section approximately along the Arkansas River. The striking feature 

 of the series south of the Arkansas is the transitions from sandstones and calcareous 

 shales with coal-beds, to red sandstones and shales. The line marking approxi- 

 mately the limit of the red color cuts diagonally across the stratification." 



In another report,*" giving results of a reconnaisance made for the pvirpose 

 of reviewing the mapping done by Mr. Cummins of the Texas Survey, 

 Adams says: 



"The limestones of the Albany division, although they thin out northward, 

 extend across the line drawn as the contact between the Carboniferous and the 

 Permian, and are represented in the Clear Fork and Wichita divisions." 



In 1909 Beede ^ gave the following account of the transgression of the 

 red color into the limestones: 



"In the region south of the western end of the Arbuckles the Red Beds lie 

 unconformably upon the tilted and eroded Pennsylvanian rocks. It appears that 

 the Albany- Wichita sea of northwest Texas transgressed over this region during 

 a time of slight depression, the waters covering the western end of the Arbuckle 

 Mountains, swinging eastward on their northern slope as far as the Seminole 

 country. According to Cummins, there is no unconformity in Texas between the 

 lighter sediments and the Red Beds, the transition between the Albany and the 

 Wichita being a gradual lateral one. The transgression of the Red Beds in the 

 Arbuckle Mountains msiy, then, be regarded as a northeastern or eastern encroach- 

 ment of the Wichita sea, or conditions of sedimentation, as all these beds may not 

 be marine. Whether this Arbuckle unconformity extends northeastward to the 

 easternmost limit of the Red Beds has not yet been determined, and indeed may 

 be very difficult to determine, where the unconformity would resolve itself to a 

 mere disconformity of the layers of shales, and perhaps accompanied by a greater 

 or less reworking of the lower deposits. Gould, who has been over this region 

 between the Arbuckles and the Arkansas River many times, states that he knows 

 of no unconformity. If no unconformity exists to the north of the Arbuckle Moun- 

 tains, it seems probable that the first Permian emergence began here and the depo- 

 sition of the Red Beds in the Seminole country is the first record of it, the later 

 sediments from the Arbuckles reaching farther north. Regarding the gradation 

 of the upper part of the Kansas section into the Red Beds in northern Oklahoma, 

 there can be no doubt whatever, and the same is probably true of the central 

 part of the State. 



"The Arbuckle and Wichita Mountains are probably the source of much of the 

 red sediment, in which they are partially buried, and the former mountains are 

 directly responsible for the eastern extension of these beds into central Oklahoma. 

 The extent to which the lighter-colored sediments of Kansas and Texas are re- 

 placed by red sediments in Oklahoma and near it represents in a rough way the 

 limits of the influence of these mountains on the deposits of the time by the spread 



"Adams, Lithologic Phases of the Pennsylvanian and Permian of Kansas, Indian Territory, and 

 Oklahoma (Abstract), Science, vol. 15, p. 545, 1902. 



'' Adams, Abstract of paper read before Geological Society of Washington, Science, vol. 16, p. 1029, 1903 

 ° Beede, Jour. Geol., vol. 17, p. 713, 1909. 



