3 
II -PALAEONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE CRETACEOUS 
DEPOSITS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 
Peevious records of the occurrence of Cretaceous fossils within the boundaries 
of this State are not numerous. 
1861 . — In this year the late Hev, W. B. Clarke wrote as follows ; — 
“ In this Colony the only Ammonite I have heard of is one in my own 
possession, found in surface drift in the Clarence Iliver district; hut it is a 
fragment only and may belong to a far older formation than the Cretaceous.” ^ 
No beds of this age are known east of the Great Dividing Bange, so it is 
possible that the specimen may have been an Amnionoid derived from either 
Carl)oniferous or Permo-Carboniferous beds. 
1881 . — In his “ Beport on the Albert Gold-held,” ^ Mr. II. Y. L. Brown 
stated that in the upper position of the Cretaceous (Desert Sandstone) as 
developed in the Grey Banges, situated in north-west N. S. "Wales, “on the 
top of one of these small tablelands, 8 or 10 miles south-west of Whampa, 
there is a grove of fossil tree stumps, standing in an uj)right position ; there 
are thirteen or fourteen large ones, the greatest diameter being about 4 feet 
and the height 5 ^ feet. The woody portion is represented by a white quartz 
rock, and the bark by a brown quartzose sandstone and grit. Many of them 
are hollow, and fragments are lying about in all directions. Originally they 
must have been covered up while erect by a deposit of mud or other soft 
material like that on which they grew, and l)ecame petrified by the infiltration 
of silica and deposition of sand in their hollow portions ; the matrix having 
since been denuded, they stand as evidences of how trees have degenerated 
in size in this part of the country since Cretaceous times.” 
In the lower portions of the same formation (Bolling Downs Series), 
Mr. Brown says of the organic remains : — “ In the limestone boulders and 
bands, and in the mudstone of this deposit, Cretaceous fossils are found in 
large numbers, consisting of shells, leaves, and wood, at Mokely Well, near 
Mount Poole, near Mount Stewart, and at Kalpite, Mount Wilson, and 
Ceolpocha Wells, [and] on Dunlop Bun in the Darling District.” 
* Recent Geol. Obs. in Australasia, 2nd Edit., 18G1, pp. 14-15. 
N. S. Wales Pari. Papers, 1881, 427- A. 
