REPORT OF THE STATE PALEONTOLOGIST 1902 969 



When fresh the lower part is bluish in color and the upper part 

 green, but it weathers to a rusty brown from its iron content. 

 It is sparingly fossiliferous. 



Immediately above these shales there is a sandstone 10 to 

 15 feet thick, most prominently exposed in and north of Cuba 

 in a number of quarry openings. It is a medium to coarse 

 grained, somewhat arkosic sandstone, usually of a light cream- 

 color and smelling strongly of petroleum on freshly fractured 

 surfaces. As seen in a quarry a few rods east of the Erie depot 

 in Cuba there are exposed at the base 8 feet of thick bedded, 

 hard, cream-colored sandstone, above them two feet of green and 

 brownish shale, then two feet of sandstone abundantly fossilif- 

 erous. Above these are about 12 feet of sandy olive shale that 

 weathers to a rusty brown, then 2 feet of thin-bedded flaggy 

 sandstone, above which are seen to the top of the opening 8 

 feet of interbedded shales and thin shaly sandstone plates. 

 The lower 10 feet of the sandstone are quarried. In places the 

 stone is stained with iron along joints and seams. Fossils 

 occur rather abundantly in certain layers and in the coarser 

 parts an occasional small quartz pebble is found. Other quarry 

 openings are found in and near Cuba. At North Cuba the rock 

 has been opened at several places and; probably furnished the 

 stone for the dam of the old canal reservoir there. The region 

 in which it occurs above water level is glaciated and almost 

 all outcrops are concealed by till. It extends from North 

 Cuba and Ischua, however, down Oil and Ischua creeks to near 

 their junction where its dip carries it beneath flood plain level. 



A solitary exposure of sandstone having the same general 

 appearance, situated at about the same geologic horizon, and 

 carrying the same characteristic Cuba sandstone fossils is 

 found in a Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railway cut north 

 of Great Valley on the Salamanca quadrangle and has been 

 correlated with the Cuba sandstone. All other exposures 

 along Great Valley creek are entirely concealed by the drift 

 so that its areal extent there is unknown. 



From its exposure in quarries in and around Cuba this sand- 

 stone is known as the Cuba sandstone. It is regarded as a 

 lentil in the Chemung formation. 



