6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I44 



and hence not included within the group of reddish beds that were 

 involved in the original definition of Hayden. Secondly, Veatch con- 

 sidered that the reddish and essentially conglomeratic beds in Echo 

 Canyon correlated with his Almy. Much of the sequence exposed 

 in Echo Canyon is unconformably beneath the Tertiary, and in a 

 recent paper by Williams and Madsen (1959) the older beds have 

 been named the Echo Canyon conglomerate. They report fossils 

 identified by Cobban as demonstrating a Cretaceous age, possibly 

 late Niobrara. These exposures, it may be recalled, are those most 

 glowingly described by Hayden, and are as much a part of the original 

 Wasatch as is the Knight. This is, of course, an unwarranted exten- 

 sion of the group concept. 



The U. S. Geological Survey and others have often extended use 

 of "Wasatch" to designate reddish or variegated beds in many re- 

 mote areas and basins not a part of the basin of deposition for which 

 Wasatch was originally proposed. This practice is, of course, unac- 

 ceptable by standards based on probable formation continuity, and 

 by such designation the geologist can only be implying a color re- 

 semblance, or more often than not he is using it as a time term to 

 indicate an early Eocene ( ?) age. 



The term "Wasatch" no doubt should be abandoned but it has be- 

 come so deeply entrenched in the literature that this may not be 

 feasible. Redefinition to exclude the Echo Canyon conglomerate 

 would, in general, conform to later usage in southwestern Wyoming. 

 This would involve beds that have been described by Veatch as Almy 

 and Knight in the Fossil Basin, but exclude, of course, the Evanston 

 formation. The Almy is nearly unfossiliferous in the type area and 

 although it appears to occupy a position stratigraphically between the 

 Evanston and Knight, suggesting an uppermost Paleocene or Clark- 

 forkian age, it is regarded by Tracey and Oriel (oral communication) 

 as probably no more than a coarser or marginal facies of the Knight.^ 

 Wasatch in this manner is restricted to scarcely more than formation 

 significance in the Fossil Basin, and probably also in the adjacent part 

 of Utah. 



2 During the 1961 field season, after this paper had gone to press, determinable 

 remains of fossil mammals were encountered by Franklin L. Pearce, Steven S. 

 Oriel, and myself in beds mapped by Veatch as Almy on the north side of Red 

 Canyon just to the east of the town of Almy. Several genera are recognized and 

 an early Eocene age is evident, demonstrating that the "Almy" in its typical area 

 is a coarser facies of the Knight. Details of the occurrence, the fauna represented 

 and conclusions to be drawn are being prepared as a separate geological note by 

 Tracey, Oriel, and myself. 



