AGE OF APPALACHIAN AND RED BEDS 685 



determine the position of what may have been the oldest red beds of the 

 Appalachian region. 



Turning now to the western section, we find the clearest record of the 

 oldest red beds in Oklahoma, especially north of Arbuckle Mountains. 

 On approaching Oklahoma and the Arbuckle Mountains from well up in 

 southern Kansas, the strata are seen to become red as one goes south along 

 the outcrops, and soon the stratigraphic level of the red beds grows lower 

 and lower until Pottawatomie and Seminole counties are reached. The 

 details and general principles of this color change and accompanying 

 lithological facies of the deposits has been discussed by Gould in Water 

 Supply Paper 148, and by Snider 24 and Beede, 25 and will not be repeated 

 here. 



Fritz Aurin prepared a paper on the Eed Beds of Oklahoma, 26 in which 

 he published a lithobathic map of the Oklahoma red beds showing their 

 thickness by contours. In this article he discusses the depth to which the 

 red beds are found in the Pennsylvanian rocks, and states : 



"The red Pennsylvanian is a term applied to an undifferentiated series of 

 sandstones and shales, predominantly red in color and very similar to the 

 Permian red beds, occupying an interval between the non-red Pennsylvanian 

 and the Neva limestone or equivalent horizon. . . . 



"The red Pennsylvanian and Seminole conglomerate in a section across the 

 northern part of Pottawatomie and Seminole counties is the approximate 

 equivalent of the following named formations : Ladore shales, Mound valley 

 limestone, Galesburg shale, Dennis limestone, Cherryvale shales, Drum lime- 

 stone, Chanute shales, Iola limestone, Lane shales, Allen limestone, Vilas 

 shales, Stanton limestone, Le Roy shales, Kickapoo limestone, Lawrence shales. 

 Oread limestone, Kanwaka shales, Lecompton limestone, Tecumseh shales, 

 Deer Creek limestone, Calhoun shales, Topeka limestone, Severy shales, How- 

 ard limestone, Scranton shales, Burlingame limestone, Willard shales, Emporia 

 limestone, Admire shales, Americus limestone, and Elmdale formation. The 

 thickness of the red Pennsylvanian and Seminole section is approximately 800 

 feet, while that of the equivalent Kansas section is 1,800 feet." 



From this it is evident that the red beds began in the region north of 

 the Arbuckle Mountains as early as the Bethany Falls limestone, or very 

 near the base of the Missourian, which is fully as low, if not lower, strati- 

 graphically than the base of the Round Knob formation of West Virginia 

 and Ohio. 



The similar transition of beds of sands and shales into red sediments 

 in Texas is given by Gordon as follows : 



24 L. C. Snider : Bull. Okla. Geol. Survey, 1913, p. 11. 



25 Bull. Okla. Geol. Survey, 1914, p. 21. 



26 Bull. No. 30, Okla. Geol. Survey, 1917. Quotation from p. 23. 



