IN THE ESNA-IDFU REGION, NILE VALLEY, EGYPT 35 



On the other hand, Faris (1947) described the Upper Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary 

 succession in the Taramsa-Tukh area, near Quena, in Upper Egypt, and echoed 

 Zittel (1883) in advocating the absolute conformity of the Cretaceous-Eocene 

 succession everywhere in Upper Egypt. He divided the Taramsa-Tukh section into 

 a lower, Cretaceous part and an upper, Eocene part, and divided the former into 

 Maestrichtian and Danian, but, failing to define the boundary between them, he 

 included both on his chart as Danian. He also considered his Eocene to include the 

 so-called " Montian ? " at its base and Londinian at its top ; but, while in the text he 

 considered his basal white limestone bed with G. cf. velascoensis as the top of his 

 Danian he included it on the chart at the base of the Eocene. However, analysis of 

 the succession as described by him shows that his Danian includes the Middle and 

 part of the Upper Maestrichtian, as well as most of the Paleocene. His " Montian ? " 

 includes the uppermost Paleocene and the basal Eocene, while his Londinian repre- 

 sents the rest of the Lower Eocene. Moreover, a stratigraphical break between the 

 Maestrichtian and the Paleocene in his section is clearly evident (cf. the present 

 study), in spite of his repeated emphasis on the absolute conformity of the succession. 



Tromp (1949, 1952), using his quantitative generic method in foraminiferal analysis, 

 noticed a number of micro-faunal differences between the uppermost Cretaceous and 

 the basal Eocene in Egypt, Turkey, and the Middle East in general. Nevertheless, 

 he considered the nature of the contact between these two systems to be gradational 

 and denied the existence of any indications of an erosional hiatus at the Cretaceous- 

 Eocene boundary in the Middle East. However, in agreement with Henson (1938), 

 he placed this boundary at the junction of the Globotruncana-Guembelina Zone with 

 the overlying Globigerina-Globorotalia Zone, although he considered the top of the 

 former zone to represent the top of the Maestrichian, not the Danian as previously 

 suggested by Henson (1938). Moreover, he stated (1949) that the Cretaceous- 

 Eocene boundary in the Middle East cuts through the so-called Danian and makes 

 the term superfluous. As a result, he suggested that the term should be eliminated 

 at least in the Middle East, and added that " Further evidence suggests that in other 

 countries also the term Danian is useless as an accurate stratigraphic unit and should 

 be abandoned ". He also mentioned that by using the quantitative generic method 

 in forminiferal analysis, he had been able to classify the Senonian of Egypt and of 

 Turkey into three stratigraphical units only, which he tentatively termed the 

 Santonian, Campanian and Maestrichtian. 



Nakkady (1949, 1950, 1951a, 1952, 1955) studied the Foraminifera of six Upper 

 Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary sections from widely separated areas in Egypt. 

 He concluded that the use of rock units as time-rock units (suggested by Zittel 1883 

 and adopted by later authors) was very misleading, and thus suggested dropping the 

 rock units and using bio-zones instead. Nakkady established three zones in the 

 Cretaceous-Tertiary transition period of Egypt, a lower Globotruncana Zone of 

 Maestrichtian age, an upper Globorotalia Zone of Paleocene age, and an intervening 

 Buffer zone, described as distinguished by the complete absence or extreme scarcity 

 of both Globorotalia and Globotruncana, which he assigned to the Danian. In 



