RARITAN FORMATION— CORRELATION. 21 



of the West. Prof. Ward was the first to point out that the 

 Raritan was older than the Dakota Group, which is undoubtedly 

 the case, and it has been customary in recent years to regard 

 the Raritan as roughly corresponding to the Gault of England 

 and the Albian of continental Europe. The view here presented 

 is that the Raritan flora is much more closely allied with the 

 Cenomanian of the old world than it is with the Albian or 

 Gault. At the same time it is cjuite obviously older than the 

 Magothy flora, that of the Dakota Group and those of the South 

 Atlantic Coastal Plain, ^ unless possibly the lower Tuscaloosa, of 

 western Alabama, is equivalent to the upper Raritan in the 

 vicinity of South Amboy, so that if these latter are to remain in 

 the Cenomanian, they are to be regarded as Upper Cenomanian, 

 in which case the Raritan may be regarded as Lower Ceno- 

 manian. European geology furnishes a similar case in the 

 division of thfe Cenomanian into the substages Rotomagian and 

 Caretonian, although probably the ])arallelism of substages can- 

 not be carried across the ocean. European paleontology furnishes 

 abundant and well characterized Cenomanian and Senonian 

 floras for comparison, and by this standard the Raritan, as well 

 as the somewhat younger Dakota and Magothy floras, are clearly 

 Cenomanian floras. The Turonian stage of European geology, 

 on the other hand, has thus far yielded so meager a flora that 

 it is practically useless as a basis for comparison, and it may well 

 be that the flora of the Dakota Group, along with its southern 

 and eastern representatives — the Woodbine, Tuscaloosa, Eutaw, 

 Middendorf, Bladen and Magothy floras, represent the Turonian 

 stage of Europe. Stratigraphically, there is no contrary evidence 

 and more or less of the Dakota sandstone would simply go with 

 the overlying Benton, which invertebrate paleontologists have 

 long considered as representing the Turonian of Europe. If 

 this view is adopted it seems probable that the Raritan is to- be 

 correlated with a part of the upper Cenomanian of Europe. 



The paleobotanical evidence for the Cenomanian age of the 

 Raritan formation is briefly as follows : On general grounds, 



" Older Cretaceous deposits are known from North Carolina to Alabama, 

 but these are, in-so-far as known, unfossiliferous. 



