Glacial Beds at Wynyard, Tasmania. 29' 



have a low dip of 4° to 7° from about south-west to west. These 

 shales show rather pretty curves in the beds, and can be traced 

 to the adjacent cliff, where a bed of conglomerate of varying 

 thickness up to 6 feet overlies them on the eastern side of the 

 point, which has been called Sandy Cove Bluff by Mr. Johnston. 

 This bluff, about 180 feet high, consists of a series of fossiliferous 

 beds of limestone of Eocene age capped by basalt. Mr. Johnston 

 has illustrated it by section in the paper quoted. 



The Eocenes are divided by Mr. Johnston into two convenient 

 divisions; the lower, the Crassatella bed, a few feet only in 

 thickness; the upper, the Turritella bed, 78 feet thick. Overlying 

 this is a mass of volcanic rock (basalt, etc.) over 80 feet in 

 thickness. The Turritella bed is of special interest as it contains 

 leaves of dicotyledonous plants as well as marine shells, and in it, 

 also, has been found the oldest known Australian marsupial, 

 which Professor Spencer, M.A., F.R.S., has described^ under the 

 name of Wynyardia bassiana. 



Further north-west, on the opposite side of Sandy Cove, the 

 beds appear in better section, and consist of boulder clay merging 

 into conglomerate. Overlying this is a conglomerate of Eocene 

 age derived from the glacial beds. This conglomerate contains 

 numerous remains of mollusca, corals, etc. It varies up to about 

 4 feet in thickness, and clearly indicates the littoral nature of the 

 beds. This Eocene conglomei-ate can also been seen in the cliff 

 at Sandy Cove Bluff, but there it occurs only in very small 

 patches. 



Nearer Table Cape, in Freestone Cove, the till passes upwards 

 into a fine-grained, greenish-grey argillaceous sandstone, with few 

 pebbles; and some distance seawards a patch of this rock forms 

 an islet, standing several feet above the general level of the 

 sea floor. 



The surface of the glacial beds on which the marine Eocenes 

 have been laid down is rather uneven, and consequently the 

 Eocenes come to sea level, and again rise above it before finally 

 disappearing beneath it about one mile to the north-west of 

 Sandy Cove, where the basalt of Table Cape forms the cliffs. 



1 Professor W. Baldwin Spencer, M.A.: A Description of Wynyardia bassiana, a Fossil 

 Marsupial from the Tertiary Beds of Table Cape, Tasmania— Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1900, 

 pp. 776-795. 



