Acknowledgments 



Appreciation is expressed to Mr. H. E. Le- 

 Grand who has given freely of his time and of his 

 extensive knowledge of the Cretaceous deposits of 

 the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and who has encour- 

 aged the writer to undertake this problem. Dr. 

 Landis Bennett, Visual Aids Department, North 

 Carolina State College, acted as technical advisor 

 on photography. Professor F. M. Swain, Univer- 

 sity of Minnesota, Professor Walter Wheeler, Uni- 

 versity of North Carolina, and Mr. I. G. Sohn, 

 U. S. Geological Survey, offered many helpful sug- 

 gestions during the preparation of the manuscript. 



Previous Work 



The only previous work dealing with Mesozoic 

 Ostracoda in North Carolina is that of Swain 

 (1952), who described and illustrated 47 species 

 from two deep oil tests in the State. Other sources 

 containing information concerning Mesozoic Os- 

 tracoda from the Atlantic Coastal Plain are papers 

 by Berry (1925), Coryell and others (1935), Jen- 

 nings (1936), Schmidt (1948), and Swain (1948). 

 Mesozoic Ostracoda from Upper Cretaceous equiv- 

 alents of the Gulf Coastal Plain have been the 

 subject of a more intensive study. 



Stratigraphy 



As presently recognized, the outcropping Upper 

 Cretaceous formations of the North Carolina 

 Coastal Plain are, in ascending order, the Tusca- 

 loosa, Black Creek, and Peedee formations. Ac- 

 cording to present information, the Tuscaloosa 

 formation contains no marine fossils in outcrop, 

 but beds mapped as the Tuscaloosa formation in 

 the subsurface contain a fauna of Eagle Ford and 

 Woodbine age (Spangler, p. 116). The Tuscaloosa 

 formation is unconformably overlain by the Black 

 Creek formation. The Black Creek formation con- 

 sists of a lower, unnamed member and an upper 

 member, the Snow Hill marl member. On the basis 

 of lithology and stratigraphic position, the lower 

 member of the Black Creek formation at the sur- 

 face is considered to be the shoreward extension 

 of beds equivalent to those of Austin or Taylor 



age in the subsurface. The upper member, the 

 Snow Hill marl member, is of Taylor age, the 

 correlation being based on the presence of Exogy- 

 ra yonder osa in outcropping sections (Stephen- 

 son, 1923, p. 48). The Peedee formation overlies 

 the Black Creek formation conformably. In North 

 Carolina the Peedee formation includes the Ex- 

 ogyra costata zone and the Exogyra cancellata 

 subzone of Stephenson and is correlated with the 

 Navarro formation and its equivalents of the Gulf 

 Coast (Stephenson, 1923, p. 51). 



The fauna described in this paper was obtained 

 from exposures of the Snow Hill marl member of 

 the Black Creek formation and from the Peedee 

 formation. Zonation of the two units by means of 

 the ostracodes seems practical but was not under- 

 taken at this time because the subsurface hydro- 

 logic boundaries, which the writer was seeking to 

 establish, are formational rather than intrafor- 

 mational in nature. 



Lithologic Character of Snow Hill 



Marl Member of Black Creek 

 Formation and Peedee Formation 



In surface exposures the Snow Hill marl mem- 

 ber consists of black to gray laminated sandy clay 

 and interbedded sand, with varying amounts of 

 fine-grained glauconite, marcasite aggregates, 

 and black lignitized wood fragments. Most of the 

 macrofossils consist of poorly preserved casts and 

 molds, no calcareous shell material remaining. Lo- 

 cally, however, calcareous shell material has been 

 preserved in a sandy clay matrix, and forms a 

 drab-gray marl which reflects varying degrees of 

 induration. The Peedee formation exhibits a vari- 

 able lithology in outcrop. In the southern part of 

 the State it most nearly resembles the Snow Hill 

 marl member lithologically, and it is very difficult 

 to separate the two even where they occur in the 

 same section. Along the strike to the northeast, 

 in Lenoir, Pitt, and Greene Counties, the Peedee 

 is composed of gray to green medium- to coarse- 

 grained glauconitic sand in a clay matrix contain- 

 ing varying amounts of calcareous shell material. 

 Indurated beds composed mainly of the valves of 

 Exogyra costata Say and Exogyra cancellata Ste- 

 phenson form prominent ledges along many of the 

 streams. 



