134 Fish Beds and a Fossil Foot Mark in New Jersey. 



Art. XTII. — Notice of newly discovered Fish Beds and a Fossil 

 Foot Mark in the Red Sandstone Formation of New Jersey ; 

 by W. C. Redfield. 



Since the discoveries of fossil fishes and foot marks in the red 

 sandstone formation of Connecticut and Massachusetts, some of 

 which fossils resemble in their characters the ichthyolites which 

 are peculiar to the new red formations of England and Ger- 

 many, it has been deemed important to ascertain if analogous 

 memorials belong to the apparently kindred rocks in New Jer- 

 sey, and which also extend southwesterly across several of the 

 Atlantic states. 



About four years since, the discovery of fossil fishes in the New 

 Jersey rocks, near Boonton, was made known in this Journal. 

 Soon after, I obtained several species from this bed, nearly all 

 of which have been found to agree with the species which I had 

 obtained from the sandstone formation in Connecticut.* 



This agreement in fossils being established, it was still desira- 

 ble to obtain further comparisons, and more especially, to deter- 

 mine whether the fossil footsteps, the Ornithoid-ichnites of Prof. 

 Hitchcock, appear in the sandstone rocks of New Jersey.f 



Early in the present autumn, specimens of ichthyolites from 

 another locality in New Jersey, were presented to the New York 

 Lyceum of Natural History, by A. R. Thomson, Esq. The spe- 

 cimens were obtained near the sandstone quarries of Peter M. 

 Ryerson,, Esq., in Pompton, about twenty five miles from New 

 York, and perhaps ten miles northeasterly from the above men- 

 tioned fish-bed at Boonton. These fossils had been lately brought 

 to light by excavations made in search of coal, in a thin bed of 

 dark colored shale, the joints of fracture in which were found to 

 contain indurated bitumen ; which had doubtless exuded from 

 the rock, in a softer state. This bed of shale separates the over- 

 lying " variegated calcareous conglomerate" of Professor Rogers, 

 from the red sandstone rocks beneath ; and is described by him 



* This Journal, Vol. xxxv, for 1839, p. 192:— Vol. xxxvi, p. 186:— Vol. xli, 

 pp. 25-28. 



t The term Ornithichnites, used by Professor Hitchcock in describing these 

 foot marks, has been changed by him to Ornithoidichnites. See his late Report 

 on the Geology of Massachusetts. 



