THE FLORA OF THE CHEYENNE SANDSTONE OF KANSAS. 
‘By Epwarp WiiBer Berry. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The present study is based on collections 
made by Hill in 1894, Ward and Vaughan in 
1896, Ward, Gould, White, and Cain in 1897, 
and Lee in 1919. These collections were very 
extensive, but the bulk represented small 
fragments of the more abundant species, such 
as the Sequoia and Sapindopsis. The flora 
itself as at present known consists of a very 
small number of species. 
The Cheyenne sandstone comprises about 
100 feet of gray to yellow friable quartz sand- 
stone with subordinate lenses of dark shale. 
The sandstone ranges from fine to coarse and 
contains a few layers of quartz and chert 
pebbles. It is in the main only slightly 
consolidated and is very friable and easily 
eroded. ‘The bedding is extremely irregular 
and discontinuous, and cross-bedding is obvious 
throughout and in places extremely pronounced. 
Logs of silicified wood and Cycadeoidea minuta 
from these beds were recorded by Cragin. 
The Cheyenne sandstone rests upon “Red 
Beds” of supposed Permian age and is over- 
lain by ‘the Kiowa shale—shallow-water and 
lagoon deposits of alternating layers of marl 
and bituminous clay shale, with a marine 
fauna that includes many species character-— 
istic of the Washita group of the Texas Cre- 
taceous. 
The invertebrates are said by Twenhofel to 
number about 50 species, of which the follow- 
ing are some of the commoner forms: 
Cardium kansasense Meek. 
Cyprimeria kiowana Cragin. 
Exogyra texana Roemer. 
Gryphaea corrugata Say. 
Gryphaea navia Hall. 
Ostrea quadriplicata Shumard. 
Pecten texanus Roemer. 
Protocardia texana Conrad. 
Schloenbachia belknapi (Marcou). 
Schloenbachia peruviana (Von Buch). 
Trigonia emoryi Conrad. 
1 Cragin, F. W., Wasbburn Coll. Lab. Nat. Hist. Bull., vol. 2, pp. 
65-66, 1889. 
” 
In some places the Tertiary overlies the 
Kiowa; elsewhere the following units in ascend- 
ing order have been recognized by Gould: 
Spring Creek clays, Greenleaf sandstone, Kirby 
clays, and Reeder sandstone. The names are 
those proposed by Gould and Cragin and have 
not been formally recognized by the United 
States Geological Survey. These units are’ 
chiefly local phases or lentils in the Kiowa, of 
little significance except as indicative of local 
and more or less contemporaneous variations 
in conditions of deposition, with perhaps a 
basal member of the Dakota sandstone repre- 
sented in the ‘‘ Reeder.” 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 
The term ‘Dakota group” was first used in. 
1861 by Meek‘and Hayden? for the lower por- 
tion of their section of the Cretaceous of Ne- 
braska, corresponding to No. 1 of the classic 
Meek and Hayden Upper Missouri section.® 
This term or simply Dakota or Dakota sand- 
stone has subsequently been used in innumer- 
able references to local geologic sections 
throughout the West. The assumption that 
the Upper Cretaceous of that whole region 
contained two persistent sandstones—the Da- 
kota at its bottom and the Fox Hills near its 
top—and the fancied recognition of these 
sandstones over a wide area have caused much 
of the confusion and controversy that have 
arisen over the interpretation of the western 
Cretaceous. 
As ‘originally understood the term Dakota 
was applied to the pre-Benton Cretaceous, no 
Lower Cretaceous being then recognized in 
that region. Unquestionably the typical. Da- 
kota sandstone represents the littoral or mar- 
ginal deposits of the transgressing Benton sea, 
but that there are similar and somewhat 
earlier continental or marginal sandstones in 
2Meek, F. B., and Hayden, F. V., Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia 
Proc., vol. 13, p. 419, 1861. 
*Hall, James, and Meek, F. B., Am. Acad. Mem., vol: 5, p. 405, 1856. 
Meek, F. B., and Hayden, F. v. , Acad Nat. Sci. Philadelphia Proc., 
vol. 8, p. 63, 1856. 
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