30 Journal of the Mitchell Society [August 



W. J. Scruggs, H. C. Stillwell, R. W. Upchurch, H. J. Weaver, M. A. 

 Widenliouse, J. G. Woodward; Pharmacy — J. L. Alexander, D. B. 

 Kirtiker, J. E. Johnson; Physics — Wilton Cathey, Roy E. Cole, W. E. 

 Comer, C. F. Smith, P. D. Stephenson; Psychology — F. M. Dula, 

 H. A. Helms; Zoology — F. 0. Glover, Charles Holshouser. 



260th Meeting — November 14, 1922 



Collier Cobb — Permian Fossils from the Base of the North Carolina 

 Newark. 



The sparsity of fossils at the base of what we call the Triassic in 

 North Carolina is such that geologists have been unable to determine 

 the age of the formation. Emmons, however, including in it everthing 

 from the basal conglomerate and red sandstones, through the coal, 

 fireclay, black band, and calcareous and bituminous shales, to and 

 including the drab-colored sandstones just below the second con- 

 glomerate. Denison Olmsted, then a professor in the University of 

 North Carolina, announced in the second volume of Silliman's Ameri- 

 can JoioMal of Science (vol. ii, 175, Nov. 1920) the discovery of a 

 red sandstone formation in North Carolina, Avhicli he had traced 

 through the counties of Orange and Chatham, with a breadth, in one 

 instance at least, of about seven miles. Olmsted, in 1824, described a 

 far more extended area of these rocks, and we know today that their 

 extent is exactly as he mapped them at that time. 



The Permian and Triassic of Emmons were by Kerr, 1875, grouped 

 together as Triassic. Russell, in Bulletin 85 of the United States 

 Geological Survey, prepared for the meeting of the International 

 Congress of Geologists in 1892, applied to these rocks the name New- 

 ark System, Redfield, in 1856, having proposed the use of Newark 

 Group. 



Without reviewing farther the work done in these red sandstone 

 areas, the present writer thinks that he has stratigraphical, lithological, 

 and palaeontological evidence for the Triassic age of the greater 

 thickness of these strata, though the conglomerates at the base, with 

 the white, gray, or red sandstones lying immediately upon them he 

 considers to be Permian; and the fossiliferous gray and drab slates 

 at the top he has put down as transitional or Rhoetic. He has several 

 times reported on these to this Society. 



