424 New York State Museum 



Climate. The life of the Mississippian indicates 

 warm equable marine waters. In the early part of the 

 period warm and moist conditions on the land are indi- 

 cated, but in the latter part of the period semi-arid and 

 even arid conditions prevailed, and toward its close the 

 climate became cool. The cooler climate of early Penn- 

 sylvanian time rapidly gave place to warm, equable and 

 humid conditions, as indicated by the luxuriant growth of 

 the coal plants. Semi-arid conditions developed in later 

 Pennsylvanian time and continued into the Permian, 

 forcing the development of seed plants. In the Permian 

 deserts existed in many places including western North 

 America, as testified by sun-cracked and ripple-marked 

 deposits, red beds and salt and gypsum deposits. 



New York formations. Carboniferous strata are 

 only sparingly represented in New York State, outlying 

 masses of oldest Mississippian unconformably overlain by 

 oldest Pennsylvanian occurring in southwestern New 

 York, in Allegany and Cattaragus counties. The extent 

 of the Carboniferous seas over southern New York is 

 not known. Permian rocks are not present at all in this 

 State. The formations are as follows : 



MISSISSIPPIAN SYSTEM PENNSYLVANIAN SYSTEM 



Bradford Pottsville 



Knapp beds Sharon shale 



Oswayo shale Olean conglomerate 



Cattaraugus beds 



Kilbuck conglomerate 



Salamanca conglomerate 



Wolf Creek conglomerate 



The Cattaraugus beds (Glenn '03; Fuller) were named 

 from exposures in Cattaraugus county and include sand- 

 stones and conglomerates with minor amounts of bright 



