14 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



in the Rorison quarry 2^ miles farther toward the southeast, and 

 in others nearer Canoga. That these quarries are in the same 

 horizon is shown by the appearance in each of a seam of soft gray- 

 ish shaly marlyte 6 to 8 inches thick easily distinguished from other 

 shaly partings in these beds. It overlies a nodular layer of chert 3 

 to 5 inches thick, but the rock for 10 to 12 feet above and below it is 

 quite free from chert and in even tiers of convenient thickness, 

 and therefore specially desirable for building purposes. 



The upper layers appear along the bed of the stream that crosses 

 the Waterloo-Romulus road i^ miles southeast of Waterloo and 

 in an old quarry by the roadside ^ miles northeast of Kuneytown. 



The fauna of the Onondaga limestone is a large one, the lists of 

 the species given in New York State Museum bulletin 63 for the 

 Canandaigua and Naples quadrangles containing 3 fishes, 39 crusta- 

 ceans, 13 cephalopods, 3 pteropods, 38 gastropods, 15 lamelli- 

 branchs, 48 brachiopods, 4 crinoids and 30 corals, total 193. 



Marcellus shale 



This formation was described by both Hall and Vanuxem as 

 admitting of division into two parts. The former says on page 177 

 of the Report on the Fourth Geological District, 1843 • " The lower 

 is very black, slaty and bituminous and contains iron pyrites in great 

 profusion; some portions are calcareous and it is always marked by 

 one or more courses of concretions or septaria which are often very 

 large. This division terminates upward by a thin band of limestone 

 above which the shale is more fissile and gradually passes from 

 black to an olive or dark slate color." The limestone here referred 

 to is now known as the Stafford limestone; it is 8 to 10 feet thick 

 in Erie county, but thins out toward the east and is not known 

 beyond Flint creek in Ontario county where it is but 4 inches thick. 

 Its place in Seneca and Cayuga counties is shown by a thin band of 

 lighter colored shales containing many of the fossils common in the 

 limestone. 



The term Marcellus shale is now restricted to the beds between 

 the Onondaga limestone and the horizon of the Stafford limestone, 

 and the beds formerly known as upper Marcellus are now desig- 

 nated Cardiff shale. 



In Onondaga county and farther east the transition from the 

 Onondaga limestone to the black Marcellus shale is abrupt, and 

 clearly defined, but in the succeeding 15 feet of rock there are inter- 

 stratified several thin layers of dark limestone and at the top of 



