HISTORICAL, REVIEW OF THE LARAMIE PROBLEM. 



45 



It consists generally of whitish or light-gray clay and 

 soft clayey sandstone, weathering very rapidly, with more 

 or less rounded outlines. In some places, as on Red Deer 

 River and in the Hand Hills, it is seamed with a great 

 number of beds of ironstone, which with thin beds of lig- 

 nite and lignitic shale give a definite banded character to 

 all the escarpments. It also contains a great number of 

 nodules of compact ironstone, which are often perched on 

 little pinnacles cut out of the soft sandstone. In the north- 

 ern portion, especially along the North Saskatchewan, the 

 banded appearance is seldom seen, though with the ex- 

 ception of a smaller quantity of ironstone, the rock has 

 very much the same character as further south. 



This is e33entially the coal-bearing horizon within the 

 district, all the coal found east of the foothills, except 

 probably the seams on the upper North Saskatchewan and 

 at Egg Creek, being of this age. The top of the formation 

 is marked by an extensive coal deposit seen first in the 

 Wintering Hills as a thin bed of carbonaceous shale, but 

 on being traced northward is found to thicken very greatly, 

 till on the North Saskatchewan, near Goose Encampment, 

 it has a tliickness of 25 feet. The bottom of the series lies 

 confoVmably on the Pierre shales, without any sharp line 

 of demarcation between the two. In fact, the shales 

 gradually lose their massive character and change almost 

 insensibly into thin beds, which are of decidedly brackish- 

 water origin. In the Pierre remains of land plants and 

 animals are very rare, while here traces of land plants 

 become fairly plentiful, and on Red Deer River dino- 

 saurian bones are met with in great abundance, showing, 

 with the presence of estuarine shells, the partly land- 

 locked character of the area within which the beds were 

 deposited. 



Toward the west the Edmonton gradually 

 disappears beneath the overlying beds of the 

 Paskapoo, and, Tyrrell added, 



In many places the junction of the Pierre and Laramie 

 was plainly seen, the sandstones of the Paskapoo series 

 appearing to rest conformably on the shales of the Pierre, 

 so that the Edmonton series seems to thin out and disap- 

 pear between it.s western outcrop and the eastern edge of 

 the foothills. 



The Edmonton was identified with the lower 

 division of the Laramie in the Cypress Hills 

 region, described by MeConnell, and with the 

 Wapiti River group of Dawson in the Peace 

 River region. 



The Paskapoo series was said to include " all 

 the Laramie rocks lying above those of the 

 Edmonton series" and to embrace Dawson's 

 "Porcupine Hills and Willow Creek series and 

 all but the lowest 700-900 feet of his St. Mary 

 River series." The maximum thickness noted 

 was 5,700 feet. The beds, according to 

 Tyrrell, 



consist of more or less hard light-gray or yellowish, brown- 

 ish-weathering sandstone, usually thick bed<led but often 

 showing false bedding; also of light bluish-gray and olive 

 85344—22 4 



sandy shales often interstratified with bands of hard 

 lamellar ferruginous sandstone and sometimes with bands 

 of concretionary blue limestone, which burns into excel- 

 lent lime. * * * The whole series, as shown by its 

 invertebrate fauna, is of fresh -water origin. 



The lists of fossils given by Tyrrell show 

 clearly that the Paskapoo is to be correlated 

 with the Fort LTnion of the Missouri River 

 region. 



As regards the age of the "Laramie," Tyrrell 

 concluded, after briefly reviewing the evidence, 

 that 



it seems reasonable to place the close of the Cretaceous 

 epoch at the time of the deposition of. the topmost beds 

 of the Edmonton series, and that the Tertiary epoch 

 began with the commencement of the Paskapoo period, 

 during which a great thickness of sandstones and sandy 

 shales was laid down witliout any apparent Ijreak or un- 

 conformity. 



In the same volume as that containing 

 Tyrrell's report George M. Dawson ''° presented 

 certain "Notes to accompany a geological map 

 of the northern portion of •the Dominion of 

 Canada, east of the Rocky Mountains," in 

 which he stated that in the valley of Mackenzie 

 River near the mouth of Bear Lake River 

 Richardson found rocks which he referred to 

 the "Lignite formation" but which "with 

 little doubt represent the series now known as 

 the Laramie." 



In the subsequent annual reports of the 

 Canada Geological Survey the "Laramie" 

 continued to receive occasional mention, but 

 no extensive papers in which it was involved 

 were published, and the usage of the term con- 

 tinued about as established by Tyrrell for 

 central Alberta. A number of papers were 

 published from time to time by Sir William 

 Dawson, J. F. Whiteaves, E. D. Cope, L. M. 

 Lambe, and others on dift'erent phases of the 

 paleontology of the Canadian "Laramie." 

 Thus, as early as 1885 Whiteaves °' published 

 a "Report on the Invertebrata of the Laramie 

 and Cretaceous rocks of the vicinity of the 

 Bow and Belly rivers and adjacent localities in 

 the Northwest Territor}-," in which he de- 

 scribed some 35 species from the so-called 

 Laramie of Alberta and the Souris River dis- 

 trict, this being a paleontologic supplement to 

 Dawson's paper on the same region already 

 noted. He also described many species from 

 the Belly River series, of which he said: 



^0 Canada Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey Ann. Kept., new ser., vol. 2, 

 tor 1SS6, pp. IS, 19R, 1S87. 

 5' Whiteaves, J. F., Contr. Canadian Paleontology, vol. 1, pt. 1, 1S85. 



