108 The Upper Cretaceous Deposits of Maryland 



There is likewise little doubt that the area of sedimentation represented 

 in the North Carolina deposits was continued southward along the con- 

 tinent border into the Gulf district where the Cretaceous strata attained 

 such extensive development in the Tuscaloosa, Eutaw, Selma, and Ripley 

 formations which, as will be shown later, are regarded as representing tn'e 

 Earitan, Magothy, Matawan, and Monmouth formations of the northern 

 area. It seems probable, therefore, when viewed in its broader relatione, 

 that the northern province was connected with the south Atlantic and 

 Gulf provinces and that the same general conditions were continuous 

 throughout the entire area of the Atlantic and Gulf borders. 



When the conditions that existed in Upper Cretaceous time along the 

 Atlantic and eastern Gulf borders are considered, it is apparent that 

 both in the north and in the south — in ISlew Jersey, Delaware, and 

 Maryland on the one hand, and in western Alabama on the other- — the 

 Upper Cretaceous of these areas was inaugurated with extensive deposits 

 of non-marine character which evidently spread widely over the eastern 

 and southern lowlands of the then existing Coastal Plain. It is not 

 difficult to believe that similar deposits were being formed during this 

 time over much of the intervening areas, although such deposits have 

 not been observed nor any others which might represent them. Fol- 

 lowing the Earitan epoch in the north and the evidently somewhat later 

 Tuscaloosa epoch in the south, came the transgression of the marine 

 waters of the continent border which so far buried the earlier Upper 

 Cretaceous deposits south of Maryland to the eastern Gulf area that no 

 trace of these formations has been found, if perchance they escaped /;, 

 the erosion to which they are known to have been subjected even 

 within the area of their outcrop. That they may ultimately be discovered 

 in deep-well borings is quite possible, but their absence along the line of ft 

 outcrop is but another proof of the differential movements that have taken 

 place since the deposition of the earliest Lower Cretaceous strata within 

 this area and which have been somewhat strikingly exemplified in the 

 relations of the Upper Cretaceous formations already described. 



