GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 133 
Glacial deposits have protruded. The rocks of the third area rest on the Permian 
and Carboniferous and are covered by the Benton and glacial. 
The limit of glacial deposits cuts the strike of the Dakota nearly at right 
angles not far from the Kansas-Nebraska state line. The line of boulders indi- 
cating the position of the terminal moraine enters Kansas near Kansas City and 
follows roughly the course of the Kansas, Blue, and Little Blue rivers, usually 
extending a few miles south of these streams. The northeastern corner of Wash- 
ington county, Kansas, is covered with the characteristic drift boulders, and in 
places by the loess. Southwestern Jefferson county, Nebraska, just across the 
state line, is beyond the line of drift. The largest exposed area of Dakota in 
Nebraska is in this locality. In all other parts of this state exposures occur only 
along bluffs, or as isolated points where post-glacial erosion has removed the 
later deposits. It has been estimated that, although the Dakota in Nebraska 
originally covered what would constitute more than twenty counties, the total 
amount of visible exposures, if grouped together, would not comprise a single 
county the size of Lancaster or Gage. 
SOUTHERN KANSAS AREA. 
Belvidere Locality.—This locality is chiefly known as being the type lo- 
cality of the Comanche series of southern Kansas. Some of the geologists who 
have visited this region are Cragin, Hill, Prosser, Ward, and Stanton. All of 
these gentlemen have noticed the presence of Dakota-like boulders and ledges 
on many of the hills in the vicinity. To this rock Professor Cragin gave the 
name ‘‘Reeder sandstone.’’ In 1897 Dr. Lester F. Ward and the writer first 
worked out the relations of the Comanche to the superjacent beds. 
The Comanche of the region consists of two distinct formations. Resting 
unconformably on the Red Beds is the Cheyenne sandstone, consisting of rather 
fine-grained, variously colored sandstone with intercalated beds of shale, often 
carbonaceous, and containing an abundant flora, chiefly dicotyledonous. The 
extreme thickness of the Cheyenne is between forty and fifty feet. Resting con- 
formably upon the Cheyenne is the Kiowa shale, a marine deposit consisting of 
about 150 feet of dark blue to black papyraceous shale, with occasional layers of 
soft, sandy shale and of hard limestone. The fossils consist of invertebrates, 
including insects, numerous mollusks, and vertebrates, with reptilian forms pre- 
dominating. In the paper containing the results of the investigations made in 
1897, mentioned above, the term ‘‘ Medicine Beds’’ was applied to a series of 
transition beds supposed to be intermediate between the Comanche and the 
Dakota. (See pl. IV.) 
At the time the paper was written it was not known that fossils were present 
in the beds. Doctor Stanton has since found shells which do not differ from 
those in the underlying Kiowa nearly as high as the Dakota. In view of this 
fact, it would, perhaps, be better to discard the term ‘‘ Medicine Beds’ and class 
all the strata in either the Comanche or the Dakota, although the exact line of de- 
markation can scarcely be drawn. This brief description of the Comanche of 
the Belvidere locality has been introduced here because of the fact that this is 
the basal formation of the Cretaceous of the two states. The literature of the 
subject is ample and will repay perusal.* 
The best exposures of Dakota in this region are on the upper Medicine river, 
ten miles west of Belvidere and about the same distance south of Greensburg, 
Kan. The rock is the typical brownish-red sandstone, containing great numbers 
43, Am. Jour. Sci., 5: 169-175. 
44, See Charles S. Prosser’s resume, Univ. Geol. Surv. of Kans., 2: 96-111, Also ‘‘The 
Lower Cretaceous of Kansas,’”’ Am. Geol., 25: 12-26, 
