COLLECTING FOSSILS IN THE CATSKILLS OF 

 NEW YORK 



By G. ARTHUR COOPER 



Assistant Curator, Division of Stratigraphic Paleontology, 



U. S. National Museum 



On July 1 8 the writer set out for Stroudsburg, Pa., to join 

 Dr. Bradford Willard, of the Pennsylvania Topographic and Geo- 

 logic Survey, in a study of Middle Devonian (Hamilton) strata. 

 After examining the section exposed about Stroudsburg, the party 

 continued the investigation at Port Jervis, N. Y., about 40 miles to 

 the northeast. Dr. Willard left the party here and the writer was 

 then joined by Miss Winifred Goldring of the New York State 

 Museum. In 1932 Miss Goldring and the writer studied the Middle 

 Devonian sediments of Susquehanna and Schoharie Valleys on the 

 north flank of the Catskill Mountains. These studies showed that 

 the marine sediments about Cooperstown in the Susquehanna Valley 

 interfingered with continental, deltaic beds toward the east, and led 

 to the belief that a great thickness of the Catskills facing the Hudson 

 Valley were of Middle Devonian rather than Upper Devonian age. 

 To test this belief the party undertook a study of the eastern limb of 

 the Middle Devonian outcrop from Stroudsburg, Pa., to Port Jervis, 

 N. Y., and thence nearly to Albany. In this work the writer gratefully 

 acknowledges the help of Mr. G. H. Chadwick, Catskill, N. Y., who 

 assisted the party in the difficult problems of the continental sedi- 

 ments west of Catskill. 



With the sequence at Stroudsburg as a guide, columnar sections 

 were prepared of the rocks exposed along the Delaware River west 

 of Port Jervis ; in the Neversink Valley at Roses Point ; along 

 Rondout Creek above Napanoch; in Stony Hollow, west of Kingston; 

 and up the Kaaterskill west of Catskill. It proved to be impossible 

 to prepare complete sections of the Hamilton between Port Jervis 

 and Napanoch because thick glacial deposits in Neversink and Ron- 

 dout Valleys obscure the lower part of the Middle Devonian column. 

 Middle and Upper Hamilton strata, dipping 13 degrees to the north- 

 west, are well exposed from the west side of Port Jervis up the 

 Delaware River to Sparrowbush and are about 2,600 feet thick. This 

 section has many similarities to the marine sequence exposed about 

 Cooperstown in Susquehanna Valley. 



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