356 WHITE AND SCHUCHERT—CRETACEOUS SERIES OF GREENLAND. 
crease in thickness in passing westward. These dark beds, composed of 
dark carbonaceous, hardly laminated, but rather sandy, shales, which 
soon comprise the greater part of the sections below the basalt, appear, 
both in their composition and fossil contents, to represent a more dis- 
tinctly marine phase of the Upper Cretaceous. 
At Sayiarkat the dark series appears to extend, with occasional lighter 
zones, from the top of a knob of older (probably Mesozoic) basalt, rising 
about 300 feet above tide, up to the Tertiary basalt cap. In the upper 
part of the sections small irregular areas of pinkish-red shale, whose color 
and hardness is possibly due to oxidation, though the shale has all the 
appearance of having been burned, are seen in the walls of the ravines. 
The dark series is the source of the calcareous ironstone concretions 
which furnished some of the invertebrate material very imperfectly de- 
scribed by de Loriol.* On exposed surfaces the shales slack rapidly 
into dark sandy material without evidence of bedding except occasional 
light bands. ‘The result of this rapid decay is an unusually long slope: 
in the spursand deep cutting of the soft beds into steep ravines. These 
terminate in deep and abrupt gulches, each a “ Kook Angnertunek.” 
On ascending the second ravine west of the pre-Cretaceous or older 
Cretaceous basalt cliffs at Saviarkat, the sides of the valley for some dis- 
tance were found to be so thoroughly decayed as to obliterate the bed- 
ding. The irregularly rounded fossiliferous nodules occur in the stream 
bed and in the shales. At an altitude of 450 feet the strata are more 
freshly cut and reveal the bedding. ‘The dip is nearly parallel with the 
eradient of the stream, and from 525 feet to over 700 feet above tide a 
thin slightly ferruginous layer, one of the nodule-bearing strata, is within 
reach of the hammer from the stream level, while at about 850 feet above 
tide this particular horizon passes under. Theaverage dip in this ravine 
is over 900 feet to the mile toward the coast. It is only in the heads of 
the ravines that sections of the beds can be made. 
The concretions are nowhere abundant and vary in size up to lentic- 
ular masses six feet long and two feet thick. A small percentage of 
these have marine fossils and fragments of wood. Dr T. W. Stanton, to 
whom these fossils were submitted for study, reports the following: 
““The localities between Saviarkat and Kook Angnertunek and Niakornat are 
evidently on essentially the same horizon, and the species collected include a num- 
ber of characteristic Upper Cretaceous types that allow us to refer the beds without 
question to the Senonian of Europe, corresponding with the Montana formation 
(Fort Pierre and Fox hills) of the western United States. A number of the forms 
are closely similar to Fort Pierre species, though I have not been able to confirm 
* Meddel., vy, pp. 203-213. Heer: Fl. Foss. Arct., vii, pp. 250-256. 
