8 MIDDLE ALBIAN STRATIGRAPHY 



Lemoine (1910) on the Yonne, Aube, and Haute-Marne, Ciry (1927) on the Cote d'Or, 

 and Stieler (1922) on the coastal sections at Petit Blanc Nez, may be mentioned. In 

 the period from 1930 until the war interrupted work, much new information was 

 contributed by authors such as Breistroffer working in the French Alps (1931, 1933, 

 1936, 1940), P. & J-P. Destombes at Wissant (1938a) and in the Pays de Bray (1938b), 

 Larcher (1937), Houdard (1933, 1940) and Marie (1939, 1941a) working in the Aube, 

 Yonne, Marne, and Haute-Marne. Marie's work on the Albian foraminifera and 

 their zonal value included studies of sequences in the Pays de Bray (1941b) and 

 Wissant (1941c). 



After the war, and with Spath's Monograph completed, Breistroffer (1947) 

 presented an important discussion of the ammonite zones of the Albian in France 

 and England. Since then papers on various aspects of French Albian strati- 

 graphy have been published. This more recent work is summarised, and much new 

 information added, in the report of the Colloque sur le Cretace inferieur held at 

 Lyon in 1963 (1965). 



Of necessity the foregoing review is very brief, and only the more important works 

 have been mentioned including those which give comprehensive bibliographies of 

 earlier work. However, the relevant papers on the Albian of the Anglo-Paris Basin 

 are discussed at the appropriate place in the text. Recent papers published in 

 France and England show that disagreement exists on various aspects of the zonal 

 scheme, and even the litho-stratigraphy. This disagreement is both national and 

 international ; a serious state of affairs rendering distant correlation difficult (e.g. 

 Young 1966) . It is even more serious when one realises that here we are dealing with 

 d'Orbigny's " type area " for the Albian Stage. 



An agreed zonal scheme can only be based on a detailed accurate account of the 

 succession throughout a whole province, and inter-provincial correlation can only 

 be accurately made once the stratigraphical successions are fully known. The 

 object of the present work is to attempt to give this detailed information. Its 

 presentation is the more urgent now that recent geophysical work indicates the 

 closer proximity of Greenland, North America, and Europe in Albian times (e.g. 

 Carey 1955, 1958, 1963, Bullard et al. 1965), and the need to be able to compare in 

 detail sequences in these areas with that of our own. 



The first part of this work, therefore, consists of the description and correlation of 

 sections in England and France, and this contains much new information. The 

 sections are shown graphically for easy reference. This descriptive part is sub- 

 divided into convenient geographical areas. The second part consists of a detailed 

 discussion of the ammonite zonal scheme given in Table 1 (p. 10), preceded by an 

 historical introduction. This is followed by a review of the links between the Euro- 

 pean ammonite faunal province and other areas, and in turn by a discussion of the 

 conditions of deposition in England. The work is terminated by a brief review of the 

 ammonite fauna, with^descriptions of three new species of stratigraphic utility. 



II. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 



This paper is an abridged version of the thesis accepted for the Ph.D. degree of the 

 University of London. It is a very great pleasure indeed to acknowledge the help 



