Bible Encyclopedias
Cretaceous System

Atlantic Coast.

Eastern Gulf Region.

Western Gulf Region.

Western Interior.

Pacific Coast.

European.

Denver, Livingstone, &c.

Manasquan.

(possibly Eocene).

Rancocas.

Laramie.

Not differ-

entiated or

wanting.

Danian.

Ripley.

Montana Series.

` d

Monmouth.

Montana Series.

2. Fox Hills.

Senonian.

Selma.

Navarro.

i. Fort Pierre and

Belly River.

U a

Matawan.

Eutaw.

Colorado Series.

Colorado Series.

2. Austin.

i. Eagle Ford.

Niobrara.

i. Benton.

Chico.

Turonian.

Dakota.

Dakota.

Cenomanian.

Woodbine.

Albian.

Un

conformity.

Unconformity in

places.

Horsetown

Aptian.

Washita.

c

Urgonian.

x

Tuscaloosa Series.

Fredericksburg.

Kootenay and Morrison

(or Como).

Knoxville

Q:

U

o 1 - ,

U

Potomac Series.

4. Raritan.

3. Patapsco.

2. Arundel

t

Trinity.

Neocomian.

Wealden.

I. Patuxent .

ti

Earth Movements and Vulcanicity

During the greater part of the Cretaceous period crustal movements had been small and local in effect, but towards the close a series of great deformative movements was inaugurated and continued into the next period. These movements make it possible to discriminate between the Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks, because the conditions of sedimentation were profoundly modified by them, and in most Montian Danian Aturian Maestrichtian Campanian Emscherian Santonian Coniacian Senonian Turonian Angoumian Ligerian Cenomanian Carentonian Rothomagian Albian Selbornian Aptian Gargasian Bedoulian Barremian Hauterivian Valengian Neocomian Berriasian Urgonian parts of the world there resulted a distinct break in the sequence of fossil remains. Great tracts of our modern continental land areas gradually emerged, and several mountainous tracts began to be elevated, such as the Appalachians, parts of the Cordilleras, and the Rocky Mountains, and their northern continuation, and indeed the greater part of the western N. American continent was intensely affected; the uplifting was associated with extensive faulting. Volcanic activity was in abeyance in Europe and in much of Asia, but in America there were many eruptions and intrusions of igneous rock towards the close of the period. Diabases and peridotites had been formed during the Lower Cretaceous in the San Luis Obispo region. Great masses of ash and conglomerate occur in the Crow's Nest Pass in Canada; porphyries and porphyritic tuffs of later Cretaceous age are important in the Andes; while similar rocks are found in the Lower Cretaceous of New Zealand. It is, however, in the Deccan lava flows of India that we find eruptions on a scale more vast than any that have been recorded either before or since. These outpourings of lava cover 200,000 sq. m. and are from 4000 to 6000 ft. thick. They lie upon an eroded Cenomanian surface and are to some extent interbedded with Upper Cretaceous sediments.

Economic Products of Cretaceous Rocks

Coal is one of the most important products of the rocks of this system. The principal Cretaceous coal-bearing area is in the western interior of N. America, where an enormous amount of coal - mostly lignitic, but in places converted into anthracite - lies in the rocks at the foot of the Rocky Mountains; most of this is of Laramie age. Similar beds occur locally in Montana. Coal seams of Lower Cretaceous age are found in the Black Hills (S. Dakota), Alaska, Greenland, and in New Zealand; and the " Upper Quader " of Lowenberg in Silesia also contains coal seams. Coals also occur in the brackish and fresh-water deposits of Carinthia, Dalmatia and Istria, while unimportant lignitic beds are known in many other regions. The Fort Pierre beds are oil-bearing at Boulder, Colorado; and the Trinity formation bears asphalt and bitumen. Important clay deposits are worked in the Raritan formation of New Jersey, &c., and pottery clays are found in the Lowenberg district in Germany. The Washita beds yield the well-known hone stone. Great beds of gypsum exist in the Cretaceous rocks of S. America. Near Salzburg a variety of the hippuritic lime stone is quarried for marble. Lithographic stone occurs in the Pyrenees. The economic products peculiar to the chalk are mentioned in the article Chalk. Beds of iron ore are found in the Lower Cretaceous of Germany and England.

The Life of the Cretaceous Period

The fossils from the Cretaceous series comprise marine, fresh-water and terrestrial animals and plants. Foremost in interest and importance is the appearance in the Lower Potomac (Lower Cretaceous) of eastern and central N. America of the earliest representatives of angiospermous dicotyledons, and undoubted monocotyledons, the progenitors of our modern flowering plants. The angiosperms spread outward from the Atlantic coast region of N. America, and first appeared in Europe in the Aptian of Portugal; towards the close of the Lower Cretaceous period they occupied parts of Greenland, the remaining land areas of N. America, and were steadily advancing in every quarter of the globe. At first the Jurassic plants, the Cycads, ferns and conifers, lived on and were the dominant plant forms. Gradually, however, they took a subordinate place, and by the close of the Cretaceous period the angiosperms had gained the upper hand. The earliest of these fossil angiosperms is not in a true sense a primitive form, and no records of such types have yet been discovered. Some of the early forms of the Lower Cretaceous are distinctly similar to modern genera, such as Ficus, Sassafras and Aralia; others bore leaves closely resembling our elm, maple, willow, oak, eucalyptus, &c. Before the close of the period many other representatives of living genera had appeared, beech, walnut, tamarisk, plane, laurel ( Laurus ), cinnamon, ivy, ilex, viburnum, buckthorn, breadfruit, oleander and others; there were also junipers, thujas, pines and sequoias and monocotyledons such as Potamogeton and Arundo. This flora was widely spread and uniform; there was great similarity between that of Europe and N. America, and in parts of the United States (Virginia and Maryland) the plants were very like those in Greenland. The general aspect of the flora was sub-tropical; the eucalyptus and other plants then common in Europe and N. America are now confined to the southern hemisphere.

The marine fauna comprised foraminifera which must have swarmed in the Chalk and some of the limestone seas; their shells have formed great thickness of rock. Common forms are the genera Alveolina, Cristellaria, Rotalia, Textularia, Orbitolina Globigerina. Radiolarians were doubtless abundant, but their remains are rare. Sponges with calcareous ( Peronidilla, Barroisia ) and siliceous skeletons (Siphonia, Coeloptychium, Ventriculites ) were very numerous in certain of the Cretaceous waters. Corals were comparatively rare, Trochosmilia, Parasmilia, Holocystis being typical genera; reefs were formed in the Maestricht beds of Denmark and Faxoe, in the Neocomian and Turonian of France, in the Turonian of the Alps and Pyrenees, and also in the Gosau beds and in the Utatur group of India. Sea-urchins were a conspicuous feature, and many nearly allied forms are still living; Cidaris, Micraster, Discoidea are examples. Crinoids were represented by Marsupites, Uintacrinus and Bourgueticrinus; starfish ( Calliderma and Pentagonaster ) were not uncommon. Polyzoa were abundant; brachiopods were fairly common, though subordinate to the pelecypods; they were mostly rhynchonellids and terebratulids, which lived side by side with the ancient forms, like Crania and Discina. The bivalve mollusca were very important during this period, Inoceramus, Ostrea, Spondylus, Gervillia, Exogyra, Pecten, Trigonia being particularly abundant in the northern seas, while in the southern waters the remarkable Hippurites, Radiolites, Caprotina, Caprina, Monopleura and Requienia prevailed. Gasteropods were well represented and included many modern genera. Cephalopods were important as a group, but the ammonites, so vigorous in the foregoing period, were declining and were assuming curious degenerate forms, often with a tendency to uncoil the shell; Baculites, Hoplites, Turrilites, Ptychoceras, Hamites are some of the typical genera, while Belemnites and Belemnitella were abundant in the northern seas.

The vertebrate fauna of the Cretaceous period differed in many features from that of the present day; mammals appear to have been only poorly represented by puny forms, related to Triassic and Jurassic types; they were mainly marsupials (Batodon, Cimolestes ) with a few monotreme-like forms; carnivores, rodents and ungulates were still unknown. As in Jurassic times, reptiles were the dominant forms, and not a few genera lived on from the former period into the Cretaceous; but, on the whole, the reptilian assemblage was no longer so varied, and most of the distinctive mesozoic types had passed away before the close of this period. Dinosaurs were represented by herbivorous and carnivorous genera as in the Jurassic period, but the latter were less abundant than before. The Iguanodon of the Sussex-Weald and Bernissart in Belgium is perhaps the best-known genus; but there were many others, their remains being particularly abundant and well-preserved in the Cretaceous deposits of N. America. Titanosaurus, Acanthopholis, Megalosaurus and Hypsilophodon may be mentioned, some of these being of great size, while Diclonius was a curious duck-billed creature; but most remarkable in appearance must have been the horned Dinosaurs, Ceratops and Triceratops, gross, unwieldy creatures, 25 to 30 ft. long, whose huge heads were grotesquely armed with horns and bony frills.

Coincident, perhaps, with the widespread extension of the sea was the development of aquatic habits and structures suitable thereto amongst all the reptilian groups including also the birds. The foremost place was undoubtedly taken by the pythonomorphs or sea-serpents, including Mosasaurus and many others; these were enormously elongated creatures, reaching up to 75 ft., with swimming flappers and powerful swimming tails, and they lived a predatory life in the open sea. Ichthyosaurians soon disappeared from Cretaceous waters; but the plesiosaurians ( Cimoliosaurus and others) reached their maximum development in this period. The remarkable flying lizards, pterosaurs, likewise attained their great development and then passed away; they ranged in size from that of a pigeon to creatures with a wing-spread of 25 ft.; notable genera are Pteranodon, Ornitho- cheirus, Nyctiosaurus. Ordinary lizard-like forms were represented by Coniosaurus, Dolichosaurus, &c.; and true crocodiles, Goniopholis, Suchosaurus, appeared in this period, and continued to approximate to modern genera. The earliest known river turtles are found in the Belly River deposits of Canada; marine turtles also made their first appearance and were widely represented, some of them, Archelon and Protostega, being of great size. True snakes appeared later in the period.

The birds, as far as existing evidence goes, were aquatic; some, like Ichthyornis, were built for powerful flight; others, like Hesperornis, were flightless. Enaliornis is a form well known from the Cambridge Greensand. They were toothed birds having structural affinities with the Dinosaurs and Pterodactyles.

Fish remains of this period show that a marked change was taking place; teleosteans (with bony internal skeleton) were taking a more prominent place, and although ganoids were still represented (Macropoma, Lepidotus, Amiopris, &c.) they had quite ceased to be the dominant types before the close of Cretaceous times. Sharks and rays were of the modern types, though distinct in species. Amongst the early forms of Cretaceous teleosteans may be mentioned Elopopsis, Ichthyodectes, Diplomystus (herring), Haplopteryx and Urenchelys (eel).

For further information see the articles Chalk; Greensand; Wealden. Sir A. Geikie's Text-book of Geology, vol. ii. (4th ed., 1903), contains in addition to a full general account of the system very full references to the literature.

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