ORISKANY FAUNA OF BECK AFT MOUNTAIN 79 



together in the mass. The few traces of fossils in this rock indicated 

 for the most part Ulsterian species, Pentagonia unisulcata, 

 Pentamerella allied to P . a r a t a , but also a Spirifer, prob- 

 ably S. arenosus. In the Buffalo cement co.'s quarries at Buffalo, 

 the Oriskany sandstone is found to lie in small masses which have 

 been M^ashed into the cavities of the corroded surface of the Manilas 

 waterlimes and in vertical fissures filled with white quartz sand which 

 traverse the Manlius limestone and the Eurypterus-bearing cement beds 

 beneath. Fuller reference to this occurrence is made on a subsequent 

 page. 



This variation in thickness in different meridional sections results 

 in what appears at present an actual absence of the formation from 

 the rock series in certain places. It has thus not been detected in 

 the region about Cedarville, Herkimer co. Again it makes an abrupt 

 appearance at Splitrock near Syracuse. In Seneca county it does not 

 manifest itself at all, but turns up in Ontario county at the village 

 of Phelps, as just noted. Other evidences of this interrupted depo- 

 sition occur between Ontario county and Lake Erie. 



Such discontinuity of the sand deposits of the Oriskany are indi- 

 cations of an exposed and broken coast line, in the western part of 

 the state, the sand feebly encroaching on areas of entirely different 

 deposition. 



The great brachiopods, Spirifer arenosus, Rensselaeria 

 ovoides, Hipparionyx proximus and Meristella lata 

 with Tentaculites elongatus, which are the species goner 

 ally present in these arenaceous lenses, could not have had their 

 habitat on such a deposit and in a sea whose depth favored such deposi- 

 tion. W^e shall not be wrong in regarding these accumulations of 

 remains in the true Oriskany sandstone as agglomerations, swept out 

 of their facies and away from the more calcareous, deeper water 

 deposits of the time. To regai'd them as species of the sandy facies 

 of Oriskany time would, I believe, be altogether erroneous. They 

 appertain truly to the calcareous facies and the normal fauna of the 

 Oriskany formation. 



