THE AGE OF THE CRETACEOUS FLORA OF SOUTHERN 

 NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND 



EDWARD W. BERRY 

 Johns Hopkins University 



The age of the plant-containing Upper Cretaceous which out- 

 crops, or is found in morainal deposits, on Staten Island, along the 

 north shore of Long Island, and on Block Island and Martha's 

 Vineyard has never been exactly determined, although their obvious 

 general relations may be indicated by the fact that as early as 

 1838 Mather^ suggested their equivalency with the New Jersey 

 beds around Raritan Bay. 



Only one or two points in the history of their study need be 

 mentioned. Newberry considered them the equivalent of the 

 Amboy clays which as then developed paleobotanically were 

 almost entirely Raritan. Ward^ named them the Island series 

 and considered them uppermost Potomac but post-Raritan, the 

 latter being erroneously regarded as of late Lower Cretaceous age.^ 

 White,"* who was the first to prove the existence of Upper Cre- 

 taceous on Martha's Vineyard is quoted by Veatch (1906) as 

 holding that the plant beds on that island are about equivalent 

 to those at Cliffwood, New Jersey, an undoubtedly correct inter- 

 pretation. 



It was not until the Magothy formation was delimited from the 

 underlying Raritan formation and the overlying Matawan forma- 

 tion by Clarks in 1904 and its flora described by the writer^ that 

 adequate paleobotanical data were available for exact compari- 

 sons with the more or less isolated and disturbed outcrops to the 

 eastward. 



^ W. W. Mather, Kept. First Dist. N.Y. (1838), pp. 136-37. 



* Lester F. Ward, Fifteenth Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Surv. (1895), p. 335. 



3 It is not worth while to consider the claim of O. C. Marsh that these beds repre- 

 sent Jurassic sediments. 



4 D. White, Am. Jour. Sci. (Ill), XXXIX (1890), 93-101. 



5 W. B. Clark, Am. Jour. Sci. (IV), XVIII (1904), 435-40. 



6 E. W. Berry, Ann. Rept. State Geol. N.J. for igos, pp. 135-56. 



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