78 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



THE ORIGINAL ORISKANY SANDSTONE 



The name Oriskany sandstone was applied by Vanuxem to white 

 or yellowish, often friable and crumbling quartz sandstone exposed at 

 Oriskany Falls, Oneida co., where it has a thickness of 20 feet. 

 All calcareous beds are here wanting and the transition from the un- 

 derlying Manlius limestone is abrupt, but fossils are found in abund- 

 ance though not in great variety, the species being for the most part, 

 Spirifer arenosus, S. murchisoni, Rensselaeria ovoides, 

 Hipparionyx proximus, Chonostrophia complanata and 

 Meristella lata. This quality of rock does not occur in any of the 

 eastward exposures of the Oriskany from Albany county to the New Jer- 

 sey line except as an occasional thin streak without fossils. From 

 Oriskany Falls westward no calcareous beds appear except toward the top 

 of the deposit as the sedimentation grades into that of the Onondaga 

 limestone above. Through Onondaga county into Cayuga, the white, 

 often granular, sandstone is frequently exposed, perhaps nowhere better 

 than at its extreme western appearance at Yawger's woods just north 

 of Union Springs. Vanuxem observed that at no other outcrop of this 

 sandstone are the fossils so finely preserved. 



The character of the Oriskany deposit in New York from Schoharie 

 county westward may be regarded in a general way as a series of arena- 

 ceous lenses (in strike section) connected by thin sheets of quartzitic 

 sandstone. The outcrops at Oriskany Falls and Yawger's woods are 

 such lenticular masses. Others occur in the sections at Jamesville and 

 Skaneateles Falls and the last that is well marked in the westernmost 

 extension of the formation occurs at Phelps, Ontario co. Between that 

 point and Buffalo the rock may be traced as an undulated sheet a 

 few inches thick composed of angular pieces of the underlying water- 

 lime cemented by dark quartz sand. 



At the horizon of the formation in the deep salt shaft put 

 down at Livonia, Livingston co., was a 4^ foot layer at a 

 depth of 1000 feet. This layer was a hard, compact quartz 

 sand, almost a quartzite, which in its lower part contained frag- 

 ments of the hydraulic limestone on which it rests, cemented 



