Benson.—-Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Seas in Australasia. 49 
the coastal fringe " (Jensen, 1914). They are composed of cherty sand- 
stones, and contain numerous radiolaria (Hinde, 1893). They appear to 
overlie a Rolling Downs series, of which, however, no examples can be 
In western Borneo sandstone, claystone, and marl occur, characterized 
by the Cenomanian ammonite Cnemoceras, and adjacent to these are coeval 
plant-bearing sandst d limestones with Crbitolina concava. Similar lime- 
Cretaceous transgression. In the south, on the Strickland, a tributary 
he Fly River, Inoceramus concentricus has been obtained (Etheridge, 
1889). More recently a considerable extent of these rocks has been found 
(by the Lorenz, 1907, expedition ?). Professor David (1914) concludes 
that the Cretaceous transgression probably covered the whole island. The 
sediments are steeply dipping, and mostly dark-green caleareous and 
glauconitic (?) sandstones and limestones containing Inoceramus, Gryp 
Modiola, Aviculo n, Protocardium, Cidaris, Belemnites with Alveolina 
and Orbitolites. According to Rutten (1914), however, the two genera of 
foraminifera are in the Lower Tertiary rather than in the Cretaceous beds. 
It is the limestone containing these that is so widely distributed throughout 
the mountain-chain of western New Guinea, and possibly extends into the 
eastern half of the island. (See second footnote, p. 27. 
No Middle Cretaceous rocks are known in New Caledonia, where Upper 
Cretaceous beds rest directly upon Lower Cretaceous, so that a long 
emergence must have been here the feature of Middle Cretaceous time. 
The same is true in regard to the North Island of New Zealand ; but that 
some depression of the New Zealand area occurred at this time is shown 
by the entry of Middle Cretaceous sea into the north-eastern corner of the 
South Island. Here the basement beds rest on an unevenly eroded surface 
of intensely folded (probably) Lower Mesozoie rocks; and, as there is no 
evidence of folding during the Mesozoic times prior to the commencement 
of the Cretceous period, this very intense orogeny must have occurr 
uring Lower Cretaceous times. The Middle Cretaceous sands and clays 
have a maximum thickness of 8,000 ft., and contain sixteen described 
species of fossils, mostly lamellibranchs, including Inoceramus concentricus, 
with the cephalopods Gaudryceras sacya and Turrilites circumtaeniatus, 
forms widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific Lower Utatür beds, and pro- 
bably contemporaneous with the Albian beds and the upper part of the 
Rolling Downs formation (Woods, 1917). Unless Marshall’s (1917) sug-- 
gestion is correct—viz., that these beds are not really Middle but Upper 
Cretaceous—or Thomson’s (1919), that the immediately overlying flint 
limestones bridge the interval between these “ Utatür " beds and the over- 
lying chalky Danian (?) limestone, it would appear that a regression of the 
strand followed the deposition of these beds, and that the New Zealand area 
was emergent though quite unfolded during Cenomanian and Turonian times. 
