stanton.] NORTHERN UTAH. 37 



Specimens of Inoceramvs labiaUis and Avicula gastrodes were tumid 

 about 500 feet above the principal coal bed. 



The greater thickness of the lower sandstone division here is an in- 

 dication that the western border of the sea may have been near dur- 

 ing Cretaceous time. Possibly a part of the shales of the Kanab mid- 

 dle division are here represented by sandstones, and the earlier fauna, 

 thus finding a congenial habitat on the sandy bottom, may have sur- 

 vived much longer than it did a little farther east, where the subsidence 

 was greater. If this supposition be granted it will explain the fact 

 that most of the fossils in the uppermost marine bed of the Kanab sec- 

 tion are closely related to species that occur 1,000 feet lower, although 

 they are not found in the intervening strata. They have traveled across 

 the area and back again as the shallow waters in which they lived 

 shifted their place. 



Cretaceous strata with coal beds and the same species of fossils as 

 those above named in the shale below the coal are exposed in small 

 outcrops among the eruptive rocks near Iron city, 20 miles west of 

 Cedar, and they are known to occur on the same meridian farther south. 

 No Cretaceous exposures are known to occur between this locality and 

 the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. 



The coal-bearing Cretaceous beds exposed at Coalville, Utah, and 

 on Bear river, near the mouth of Sulphur creek, Wyoming, have been 

 the subject of considerable discussion, and various opinions concerning 

 their precise age have been published by the several geologists and 

 paleontologists who have visited the localities or examined collections 

 from them. They were referred to the Cretaceous by Messrs. Meek 

 and Engelmann ] in 1860 and were compared with certain Cretaceous 

 beds at the mouth of Judith river, then regarded as belonging to No. 

 1 (Dakota) but afterward proved to be of Fox Hills age. WhenCapt. 

 Simpson's report 2 was published in 187G Mr. Engelmann again expressed 

 the opinion that these beds are probably "Lower Cretaceous" [Dakota]. 



They were at first regarded as Tertiary by Messrs. Hayden 3 and 

 Lesquereux. 4 In 1870 Messrs. Meek and Hayden 5 adopted the view 

 that the Coalville beds are Cretaceous but that they "occupy a higher 

 horizon in the Cretaceous than even the Fox Hills beds of the Upper 

 Missouri Cretaceous series." 



Mr. Meek visited Coalville in 1872, and after making larger collec- 

 tions and studying the stratigraphy he decided that the entire Upper 

 Missouri Cretaceous section with perhaps some older beds is repre- 

 sented here. The detailed section that he published G shows correctly 

 the essential features of the stratigraphy. The opinions that he then 



i Proe. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., Vol. xu, p. 130. 



2 Exploration across the Great Basiu of T7tali in 1859. p. 291. 



*Ann. Kept. T. S. Geol. Sur. Terr, for 1869. p. 91. 



4 Idem for 1873, pp. 366, 371. 



6 Aun. Kept, U.S. Geol. Sur. Terr, for 1870, pp. 1G8, 291. Idem for 1871,p.377. 

 6 Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Sur. Terr, for 1872, p. 439. 



