CONCLUSIONS REGARDING GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA 57 



sidual eastern and southern edges of the great Cretaceous area of the 

 interior of Ceara and Pianhy, or perhaps they might more properly be 

 called the fragmentary outliers between the Cretaceous area of the inte- 

 rior and the Cretaceous along the coast, and known to occur at Parahyba 

 and in the states bf Alagoas and Sergipe. 



A short paper published by a Brazilian engineer in 1886 contains a few 

 points of interest in connection with the geology of the interior of the 



w. 

 Ceara 



Figure 7. — Idealized Section from Cabo Branco to Frontier of Ceara. 



state of Parahyba.* This writer mentions the existence of caves in the 

 interior of Parahyba, a fact that leads to the inference that there are lime- 

 stones in the region referred to. He also mentions f the finding of the 

 bones of large extinct animals — probably mastodons. He speaks of the 

 existence of iron, coal, lead, marl, limestone, and flint in the interior, but 

 he does not specify the localities. 



CONCLUSIONS' REGARDING THE GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA DO NORTE 



1. The leaden gray rocks exposed at the base of the hills at the city 

 of Parahyba are fairly good limestones and are of Cretaceous age. 



2. The yellow Calcareous sandstones exposed on the coast south of 

 Jacuma and at Ponta de Pedras are equivalent to the Maria Farinha 

 beds of Pernambuco and are of Tertiary age. 



3. The particolored beds forming the tops of the hills at Parahyba and 

 those in the bluffs at Cabo Branco are probably the weathered portions 

 of the Tertiary, but no unconformity is known between them and the 

 Cretaceous beds. 



4. In the absence of fossils it is not possible to distinguish between 

 the Cretaceous and Tertiary, and hence the sedimentary beds exposed 

 along the Conde d'Eu railway cannot at present be assigned to either 

 group with certainty. 



5. The sedimentary beds form the highlands along the line of the rail- 

 way from Parahyba to a point between the stations of Espirito Santo and 

 Entroncamento — a distance by rail of nearly 30 kilometers. 



6. The sedimentary beds (Tertiary and Cretaceous together) have a 

 width along this coast of only 30 or 40 kilometers. 



7. The sedimentary beds are not thick, and the underlying crystalline 



* Relatorio que o engenheiro de minas Francisco Soares da Silva Retumba dirigio ao Exm. 

 Sr Dr Antonio Herculano de Souza Bandeira, Presidente da Parahyba. Pernambuco, 1886, 46 pp. 

 f Loc. cit., pp. 16-17. 



IX— Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 13, 1901 



