EDMONTON-PIERRE CONTACT 369 



The following section was taken 3 miles below the month of Willow 



<^r^k- Feet 



Glacial boulders and yellowisli fine-grained Pleistocene (?) 



silt unconformably overlying beds below 30 



Light slate-colored clay 20 



Dark carbonaceous clay 4 



Lignite 1 



Gray-white sandy clay 8 



Ocherous yellow clay 15 



Carbonaceous material. 2 



White indurated sand, some concretions 15 



Coffee-colored fine-lined Pierre shale 50 



145 



The upper 30 feet of material in this section is a fine-grained yellow- 

 ish sandy silt, non-fossiliferous and without lines of stratification. It 

 unconformably overlies the beds below and varies from a few feet to 50 

 feet in thickness, and is present in most sections. In the upper part 

 there are frequently glacial boulders and gravel. This material may 

 have been derived from the Miocene rocks of the Hand Hills during 

 Pleistocene times. 



The coffee-colored Pierre shales are about 100 feet thick and continue 

 down the river as far as Dorothy, where dark slate-colored shales appear 

 below similar to the typical Pierre shales of the United States. Frag- 

 mentary Ammonites, Scaphites, wood, and occasionally fish bones were 

 seen in these strata. 



The Pierre shales are seen along the river for a distance of nearly 30 

 miles below Willow Creek, with clean-cut escarpments in the bends of 

 the river, though the banks are mostly sloping and grass-covered. 



Belly River Beds 



Near Fieldholme, the old Marquis of Lome Crossing, about 6 miles 

 below the mouth of Bullpound Creek, a new series, the Belly River beds, 

 appear underlying the marine Pierre. This is distinctly a fresh and 

 brackish-water series composed chiefly of soft sandstones and clays. 

 Vegetal matter is less abundant than in the Edmonton formation and 

 there are few beds of lignite. The sedimentation of the Belly River 

 beds is exactly comparable to that of the Judith River beds with one 

 exception — the false or cross-bedding is much more pronounced through- 

 out the Judith River area. 



The first stratum recognized was seen on the left bank of the river, a 



