4: FOSSIL GREAT LAKES OF THE NEWARK SUPERGROUP – 30 YEARS LATER
Paul E. Olsen
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10968
ABSTRACT
In the 1980 NYSGA meeting (Olsen, 1980b) I led a field trip to look at strata of the Triassic and Jurassic great lakes of the Newark basin which are among the largest lakes known of any time. Our view of these giant lake systems has been much amplified since that time because of the collection of industry seismic lines, the drilling of two deep exploration holes, about 40,000 ft of core by the Army Corps of Engineers, 26,700 ft of core by the Newark Basin Coring Project (NBCP), and quite a few Ph.D. theses (including my own). The purpose of this fieldtrip is to examine outcrops and related cores in the Newark basin, that illustrate some of the key features of these giant lake strata and interbedded flood basalts and how they play key roles in current debates on climate change, mass extinctions, evolution, ascent of the dinosaurs, the rifting process, carbon sequestration, and chaos in the Solar System.

4: FOSSIL GREAT LAKES OF THE NEWARK SUPERGROUP – 30 YEARS LATER

STOP 1. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Machine Shop Area)
Newark Basin Cores, Palisade Sill Outcrop, and Borehole Through Sill.
Latitude and Longitude: 41° 0.239'N, 73° 54.760'W.
Stratigraphic Units: Stockton – Boonton Formations and Palisade Sill
Age: ?Late Carnian (early Late Triassic) to Early Jurassic (∼230-200 Ma)
Main Points:
1. Representative cores of the Newark basin
2. Lacustrine cyclicity
3. Correlation between Newark and Hartford basins based on core and outcrop
4. Pompton Tuff and the size of the great lakes
5. Carbon sequestration
Cores: Cores will be on display of all of the formations of the Newark basin (Figure 10) as well as a core of the Shuttle Meadow Formation of the Hartford basin (Figure 18) for comparison with the Feltville Formation. Detailed descriptions and interpretations of the sedimentology of these cores and related outcrops are given by Smoot (2010).
Core 1: Stockton Formation, Prallsville Member (Figures 7, 10).
This segment of core is from the Princeton no. 1 core drilled on Princeton University property near the Forrestal Campus (Kent & Olsen, 1995) (Figure 1). It is a fluvial sandstone with some of the highest directly measured porosity and permeability in the basin (3174.50 ft: 131-118 millidarcys permeability, 14.2-14.0% porosity). The Prallsville Member is below the postulated tectonosequence boundary in the Stockton (Figure 7) and is thus of Late Carnian age at about 231 Ma on the NBAGPTS.
Core 2: Lockatong Formation, Tohickon Member (Figures 7, 10).
This segment, from the Nursery no. 1 core (Figure 1) taken off Nursery Road in Ewing Township, is representative of the middle Lockatong Formation and shows nearly one complete Van Houten Cycle. The age of this unit is Early Norian about 219.5 Ma on the NBAGPTS. This represents one of the cycles deposited during times of high precessional variability, but does not represent the deepest of the Lockatong lakes and has not produced any fossil fish in outcrop. This core has well-developed pinch-and-swell lamination and some bioturbation in the deeper water intervals, polygonal desiccation cracks, and brecciated massive mudstone. When the brecciated massive mudstone is very well-developed it is difficult to see anything at all in the core. According to Smoot (2010) the brecciated massive mudstone formed by repeated wetting and drying of mud initially deposited in standing water in a playa with cracks forming over previously filled cracks.
Core 3: Passaic Formation, Cedar Grove Member (Figure 7).
This long segment is from the Weston Canal no. 1 core near Zarephath, NJ. shows much of a 100 ky cycle at around 207.4 Ma. The Cedar Grove Member is one of the most easily mapped units being identified from Newark New Jersey along Route 287 to near Birdsboro, PA. This is a nice example of penecontemporaneous gypsum including abundant nodules and anhedral crystals. According to Smoot (2010), the crystal styles and upward-coarsening successions resemble modern gypsum soil occurrences (Smoot and Lowenstein, 1991) where gypsum dust is blown onto the surface, and then redistributed downward by rainfall rather than gypsum crystallizing out of brines in playas. There are also veins of various orientations filled with fibrous gypsum that formed much later. The muds themselves however formed in very shallow lakes, with the gypsum dust possibly being blown in from very far away (as suggested by Smoot, 2010) along with a considerable amount of lithic dust. The lower part of the member has a Van Houten cycle with one of the best-laminated deep-water intervals in the Passaic Formation. The very well developed nature of this cycle contrasts with the poorly developed succeeding cycles. In outcrop this well-developed cycle has produced palynomorphs and reptile footprints of characteristic Triassic aspect including the silesaurid dinosauromorph track Atreipus milfordensis, the crurotarsian Brachychirotherium cf. parvum, and the lepidosauromorph Rhynchosauroides sp.
Cores 4 & 5: Passaic Formation, Exeter Member and Orange Mountain Basalt (Figure 7, 10).
Two cores are shown here from the Passaic Formation – Orange Mountain Basalt contact. Core 4 is a segment of the Martinsville no. 1 core of the NBCP from Martinsville, NJ from a more central basin location and Core 5 is part of the ACE series, PT-38, spanning the same interval but closer to the northern edge of the basin. Outcrops of this interval in the Jacksonwald syncline have darker shales and much more obvious cyclicity.
In addition to the facies change seen across these three sites, from better cyclicity with dark gray shales in the deeper water units in the southwest, to obscure cyclicity in red beds in the northeast, there is also a parallel change from more or less consistent vertical patterns of cycles to a vertical pattern with fully fluvial conglomeratic facies below to a more marginal lacustrine facies above at the site of PT-38. The Jacksonwald area has been a major source of evidence on the initial ETE, including abundant Triassic-aspect crurotarsian tracks such as Brachychirotherium and Apatopus, while outcrops adjacent to the location of PT-38 have produced a post-initial-ETE assemblage with abundant theropod dinosaur tracks including Eubrontes giganeteus as well as the crocodylomorph track Batrachopus and a new species of Rhynchosauroides. Also present is a Brachyphyllum-Clathropterus macrofossil assemblage with a Classopollis-dominated sporomorph assemblage.
Cores 6, 7, 8: Feltville Formation, Washington Valley Member and Orange Mountain Basalt (Figure 10) and Shuttle Meadow Formation (Figure 18).
Van Houten cycles in the lower Feltville Formation (Washington Valley Member of Olsen 1980a, 1980c) are unusual in the Newark basin in having deeper water intervals that are very carbonate rich, often limestones. These cores display the lower Feltville Formation in the Martinsville no. 1 core of the NBCP (Core 6) and PT-14 of the ACE cores (Core 7) , and the correlative part of the Silver Ridge B-1 core of the Shuttle Meadow Formation of the Hartford basin (Core 8). These cores were essential to understanding the cyclostratigraphy of the Feltville and Shuttle Meadow Formation and hence to the chronology of the continental Triassic-Jurassic boundary. In fact, it is doubtful that the basic stratigraphy could have been worked out in outcrop without the model and testable hypotheses provided by both the ACE and Silver Ridge cores.
Correlation between cores and outcrops of the lower Feltville Formation is now relatively straightforward. But that was not the case in 1980 when there were only outcrops to work with. Having not seen more than one lake level cycle in superposition I had a stratigraphic model in mind in which there was only one lake level cycle in the Feltville Formation. I interpreted various outcrops along strike accordingly and assumed the dramatic differences between outcrops was due to lateral change (Olsen et al. 1980). I had the same model in mind for the lower Shuttle Meadow Formation. However, when the ACE cores of the Feltville were examined in 1985 it was obvious that there were several Van Houten cycles in the lower Feltville (Olsen et al., 1988; Fedosh & Smoot, 1988). Instead of one carbonate-rich lake level cycle there were two. I revisited the type section of the Feltville (our Stop 3) and was able to test the outcrop generality of this pattern by digging that there were indeed 2 carbonate bearing cycles and then in late August, 2010, I did the same at our Stop 2. This has allowed unambiguous correlation of the cycles in the lower Feltville laterally. One pattern emerging from this correlation (Figure 18, 19) is a progressive thinning and onlap of the lower Feltville onto the Orange Mountain Basalt along strike from the northeast to the southwest, prima facie evidence of syndepositional folding in the Watchung syncline.
Comparison of the stratigraphy of the lower Feltville and Shuttle Meadow Formation reveals another pattern, and that is that the cyclostratigraphy is more subtle and complicated than expected. Correlation between the Shuttle Meadow Formation and the Feltville is surprisingly obvious (Figure 18), but it makes clear that rather subtle lithological features seen in outcrop and core of the Feltville have important cyclostratigraphic implications. In order to facilitate discussions about Feltville cyclostratigraphy I have given names to the individual deeper water units within the Washington Valley Member (Figures 10, 18). Whiteside et al. (2010) shows that the cyclostratigraphy of the Shuttle Meadow Formation reflects not only the ∼20 ky climatic precession cycle but also a ∼10 ky hemiprecessional cycle. In specific the Cataract Hollow, Trailside, and Vosseller beds reflect mostly the ∼20 ky cycle, while the Lake Surprise Bed reflects largely the ∼10 ky cycle. The presence of this hemiprecessional cycle outside the equatorial tropics is not expected of local insolation forcing and suggests an expansion or export of equatorial climate variability and an enhancement of the hydrological cycle perhaps due to the super-greenhouse conditions of the syn-CAMP world.
A 10 ky hemiprecessional cycle caused by direct forcing should be limited to ±5° of the equator, while the Shuttle Meadow Formation was deposited at about 21° N.
Cores 9 & 10: Preakness Basalt: Flow number 2.
We will see the stratigraphy of the lower Preakness Basalt at Stop 4, but what we will not see there are the gabbroid layers that characterize parts of flow 2. These are important because in some areas they contain zircons that crystallized from the melt and provide high-resolution dates for the flow (e.g. Blackburn et al., 2009). Several segments of ACE cores PT-20 (Core 9) and C-97 (Core 10) will be on display showing these gabbroid layers. These particular layers did produce zircons but these were all apparently assimilated from crustal rocks through which the feeders flowed (S. Bowing, pers. com.) as they have ages 100s of millions of years older than the crystallization age.
Cores 11 & 12: Towaco Formation and Pompton Tuff.
The Towaco Formation is especially well represented in the ACE cores with many parts of the formation being represented by multiple cores. At Stop 5 we will see the 3 prominent Van Houten cycles formed during times of maximum precessional variability in the middle Towaco Formation. The bed names for each of the prominent deep-water units for these cycles are given in Figure 9. Portions of cores C-128 and PT- 14 (cores 10 & 11, respectively) that contain the Colfax Road Bed are on display. This bed contains the Pompton Tuff, an airfall ash we will see in outcrop at Stop 5, but here we see it in two cores. The Pompton Tuff also extends to the Hartford basin where it is known from 4 localities a slab from one of these will be on display as well.
Philpotts (in Olsen et al. 2005 and paraphrased here) described this unit in the Hartford basins as thin bed that tends to erode proud of the surrounding deep-water lacustrine unit. The only detectable particles in the layer are all euhedral plagioclase laths with a high aspect ratio that show no signs of rounding. They must have originally been enclosed in glass that is now converted to a clay or to what appears to be chalcedony. There are small circular areas that contain a mottled gray birefringent material that looks very much like chert. These observations are entirely consistent with the small laths of plagioclase being part of a basaltic crystal tuff. There are also small rounded particles that seem to be bits of basalt. The tuff would seem to represent an explosive eruption of the CAMP that is separate from those that produced the stereotypical sequence of known CAMP flows.
What you can see in these cores, the thin sections on display, and slabbed portion of the Westfield bed of the East Berlin Formation of the Hartford basin is a very close match not only between the tuff, but also between the surrounding laminae. As discussed above the similarity is so strong that it seems plausible the lakes in the two basins were connected.
Core 13: Hook Mountain Basalt.
On display is an ACE core C-104 in the Hook Mountain Basalt which exhibits thin gabbroid layers. These too produced only zircons inherited from crustal sources.
Core 14: Boonton Formation, Rockaway River Bed (Boonton fish bed)
The Boonton Formation as sampled in the ACE cores closely resembles the Towaco Formation in its pattern of cyclicity and facies. ACE core PT-6 on display includes the famous bed that produced abundant fish described from the Rockaway River in Boonton, New Jersey, named here the Rockaway River Bed (Figure 10). The semionotids from this bed comprise a distinct species (20).
Lamont Carbonation Experiment Borehole
A borehole drilled at LDEO has been used for experiments in carbon sequestration carbonation using in situ carbonation in mafic igneous rocks, in this case diabase (Matter et al. 2007). Palisade diabase is visible behind (west) of the borehole site. The small small-scale CO2 injection experiment at this site showed large decreases in Mg++ and Ca++ concentrations over short periods of time (200 hours) suggested both mixing between the injected solution and aquifer water and the release of cations from water–rock dissolution, that neutralized the introduced carbonic acid (Goldberg et al. (2010). This the same kind of reaction that would result in the weathering of CAMP basalt flows and the accumulation of carbonates in the early CAMP lakes of the lower Feltville Formation, which now has the potential to sequester the carbon from the burning of fossil fuels. As Goldberg et al. (2010) point out, if large CAMP reservoirs are found in proximity to major industrial carbon sources huge volumes of CO2 could be sequestered permanently by the in situ carbonation reaction.

Proceed south on Rt. 9W along the strike of the Palisade sill.
There fill be small exposures of the sill along Rt. 9W towards Fort Lee.

Continue onto Fletcher Ave.
Exposures on north side of ramp for NJ-4 of coarse gabbroid of Palisade sill. This gabbroid produces zircons yielding a very precise age (Blackburn et al., 2009).

Driving down the dip slope of Palisade sill.
Exposures to north along US-80/I-95 reveal contact of the sill and overlying Lockatong Formation.

Exposures of Orange Mountain Basalt.

Contact between Feltville Fm and overlying Preakness Basalt.
Approximate contact between Feltville Formation and overlying Preakness Basalt. Notable is the high degree of distinctive splintery fracturing that characterizes much of the second Preakness flow, which we will see up close at Stop 4.

Passing into Feltville Formation.

Route follows strike of Feltville Formation
Route follows strike of Feltville Formation, mostly on or near the contact with the Orange Mountain Basalt.

Route now follows along middle Feltville Formation.

Heading down section in Feltville.

STOP 2. Lower Feltville Formation (Washington Valley Member).
On right is unpaved access to Eastfields Park of Somerset County Park Commission. Entrance is on upper Orange Mountain Basalt.
Stratigraphic Units: Lower Feltville Formation, Washington Valley Member, Orange Mountain Basalt
Age: Latest Triassic (Latest Rhaetian) to ?earliest Jurassic (201.3 Ma)
Main Points:
1. Condensed section of Washington Valley Member
2. Best exposure of Vosseller Bed
3. Very condensed section of Cataract Bed
4. Onlap onto Orange Mountain Basalt
5. First 100 ky after initiation of ETE
6. Limestones as products of super-greenhouse
7. Intense disruption of Vosseller Bed and "dead horses"
8. Species flocks of semionotid fishes
9. Dinosaur tracks
Walk about 250 ft north to outcrops along Blue Brook and walk downstream past the outcrops along the north bank of the stream about 800 ft west to the contact with the Orange Mountain Basalt.
About 12 m of Feltville section outcrops here. The complete Van Houten cycle containing the Cataract Hollow Bed outcrops along with nearly the complete cycle containing the Vosseller Bed, this being the best outcrop of the latter. The section is closely comparable to what is seen in the Martinsville no. 1 core, except it is even more condensed. The section begins with the vesicular upper surface of the Orange Mountain Basalt overlain by a decimeter of basalt gravel and cobbles in a bluish-gray mudstone. This is followed by a decimeter of gray/white, seemingly? oscillatory rippled sandy calcarenites passing up into two meters of red mudstone. This bed is clearly the Cataract Hollow Bed. In my section of this interval in 1980 I completely missed this bed., because I did not have an expectation of its existence. In August 2010, I looked for the Cataract Hollow Bed in the completely submerged interval near the Orange Mountain Basalt. This illustrates the need to have some kind of rigorous testable hypothesis of what should be present. Without that, why would I explore every hidden nook and underwater cranny.
The red beds above the Cataract Hollow bed is overlain by 20 cm of blue gray mudstone with fabrics like the underlying red mudstone. This is abruptly overlain by ripple cross-laminated gray fine sandstone with sole casts of dinosaur tracks. These tracks are so far all brontozooids (grallatorids).
Above the ripple cross-laminated sandstone is a grey mudstone with floating blocks to flakes of black laminated to micro-laminated limestone and claystone. Presumably, these blocks once comprised continuous layers. They are in fact comparable to what I have termed "dead horses" (Olsen et al., 1989), although these are much larger clasts ("horses"). These blocks generally exhibit signs of bedding plane-parallel shear, including folds and imbricate thrust faults. The name derives from the term "horse" for a fault-bounded sliver of rock and their "dead" or dismembered condition and the name was coined to call attention to the phenomenon. The gray mudstone shows few or no depositional sedimentary structures. There is no well-defined upper surface of the bed. In this and other deposits such as the East Berlin Formation (Olsen et al., 2005), or Towaco Formation (Stop 1), the associated massive mudstone suggests that partial liquefaction accompanied the deformation that produced the dead horses, and I interpret them as a form of low-pressure structural mélange. These features are common in fine-grained organic rich rocks but they have usually been interpreted as depositional units, such as muddy turbidites (e.g., Dyni & Hawkins, 1981). Dead horses are still a feature of the Vosseller Bed at Stop 3, but seem absent in the ACE cores.
The limestone blocks themselves can be more than a meter in diameter and 30 cm thick, especially those with folds. Fractures in the limestone contain a tarry bitumen that is liquid, if highly viscous, at body temperature but generally solid in the water. However, the oil slicks that appear on the streams surface when blocks are pried loose from the matrix attest to the presence of more fluid hydrocarbons. The thermal maturity of these beds are within the oil window based on a vitrinite reflectance value of 1.18 R0% from the Vosseller bed of the nearby Martinsville no. 1 core (Malinconico, 2009), and the hydrocarbons present were surely generated from the limestones.
These blocks of limestone themselves contain mostly articulated, and some disarticulated fish, including Semionotus, Redfieldius, and Ptycholepis (Figure 21) The presence of coprolites suggests the presence of coelacanths yet to be found. The semionotids comprise a species flock with most variation being in overall body shape and the morphology of the series of spined scales, called dorsal ridge scales along the dorsal midline (Figure 14). In fact the name Semionotus is derived from "signal back". Preservation is often exquisite and with chemical preparation extremely fine details can be seen. In chemical preparation, the side of the fish exposed upon splitting the rock is embedded in a resin such as epoxy or polyester and the maturix is subsequently removed by dissolution in acetic acid, leaving the bone adhering to the plastic. McCune recorded six species in the Feltville (McCune et al., 1984; Olsen et al., 1989).
The origin of the carbonate so prevalent in the Vosseller, Cataract Hollow, and Feltville in general is worth commenting on because such carbonate rich beds are virtually absent from the rest of the Newark basin. Carbonate and limestones are not at all uncommon in lakes, and such famous units as the Green River oil "shales" are in fact carbonates. The carbonate was mostly derived from biologically mediated chemical precipitation in the upper part of the water column, rather than from the tests of organisms. As discussed above, the unusual amount of carbonate in the Feltville and in fact in all of the post-initial CAMP basalt flows in central Pangea may relate to weathering of the CAMP basalts themselves under super-greenhouse conditions in the first 100 ky after initiation of ETE.

STOP 3. Lower Feltville Formation (Washington Valley Member) Type section.
Stratigraphic Units: Lower Feltville Formation, Washington Valley Member, Orange Mountain Basalt
Age: Latest Triassic (Latest Rhaetian) to ?earliest Jurassic (201.3 Ma)
Main Points:
1. More expanded section of Washington Valley Member
2. Best exposure of Cataract Bed and superposition of Vosseller bed.
3. Fissures in Orange Mountain Basalt
4. Copper at contact with Orange Mountain Basalt
5. First 100 ky after initiation of ETE
6. Limestones as products of super-greenhouse
7. In situ Clathropteris
9. Dinosaur tracks
Walk southeast and then southwest to the beginning of the loop near the end of Cataract Hollow Road about 2090 ft from the parking area. At the trail head, follow trail to southeast 330 ft and then about 600 ft to the northeast along the raised path (old canal levy) to Station 1 from where we will proceed to 3 additional stations to cover the stratigraphy at the type section of the Feltville Formation (Figure 19). Feltville is the name of the abandoned village of Feltville along Cataract Hollow Road, now part of the Watchung Reservation of the Union County Department of Parks and Community Renewal.
Station 1 at about 40° 40.747'N, 74° 22.718'W is an outcrop of pink, gray, and white limestone interbedded with red siltstones and fine sandstones. This is the best vertical outcrop of the Cataract Hollow Bed and its type section. Fragmentary to articulated fish and occasional coprolites occur in the lower laminated part of the limestone. The fish bones and scales are pink and dark brown. The upper carbonate beds at this station are calcarenites that grade into the overlying red beds. The laminated and laterally continuous nature of the base the Cataract Hollow Bed as well at the articulated fish shows that it was deposited in quiet water, below wave base, generally lacking oxygen in contrast to the bed at Stop 1.
To the southeast, on the opposite side of Blue Brook is a ravine that cuts down down the dip-slope of the Orange Mountain Basalt. Thin to thick-bedded red siltstones of the basal Feltville Formation fill what is clearly a fissure in the basalt. Such fissures are common in the Orange Mountain Basalt and can cut down through much of the Formation, as seen at various quarries. In Nova Scotia, such fissures contain tetrapod bones, and it quite likely they do here as well, although this site has not been sufficiently prospected.
Proceed 500 ft northeast to bluff on west side of southeast flowing tributary (out of Cataract Hollow) to east-facing bluff that is Station 2.
Station 2 at approximately 40° 40.822'N, 74° 22.718'W is an outcrop of poorly exposed black laminated carbonate and mudstone of the Vosseller Bed and surrounding gray clastics. Careful examination of the geometric relationship between this outcrop and Station 1 shows that this bed in superposition to the Cataract Hollow Bed, but this can be seen unambiguously at Station 4. Proceed southeast along the trail 270 ft crossing the small south-flowing tributary at Cataract Hollow and proceed about 620 ft to trail heading east up the slope (noting limestone of the Cataract Hollow Bed in the path). Continue 250 ft east to Station 3.
Station 3 is at about 40° 40.860'N, 74° 22.718'W and consists of an outcrop extending from this ridge to the stream below and to the south. The contact between the Orange Mountain Basalt and the overlying Feltville is nearly at stream level and the overlying beds consist a nodular limestone succeeded by the transgressive portion of a Van Houten cycle bearing the Cataract Hollow Bed, the Cataract Hollow Bed itself and the overlying regressive red beds of the cycle, which we saw better exposed at Station 1. The larger blocks of the nodular limestone are very fine-grained and contain darwinulid ostracodes. The gray sandstones and siltstones of the transgressive portions of the cycle conatin plants in growth position including the horsetail Equisetites and the fern Clathropteris as well as dinosaur footprints. The Cataract Hollow Bed is deeply weathered here and invaded by modern tree roots, and the overlying beds are highly weathered. Just upstream from this station is the old copper mine described by Manspeizer (1980) at this site. I do not think there is evidence of intrusion here and the thermal maturity of the organic material here is not elevated. Proceed north and down the slope about 150 ft to path and walk about 960 ft northeast to Station 4 on the bluff on the north side of the west flowing tributary. Station 4 is at about 40° 41.015'N, 74° 22.718'W and has good outcrops of the Lake Surprise Bed, Vosseller Bed, through the Trailside Bed and then poor outcrops down through the Cataract Hollow Bed. It was at this site that I was able to confirm the superposition of the Vosseller and Cataract Hollow beds by digging for the latter after seeing the ACE cores. The Trailside Bed consists of purple and gray siltstones containing abundant Brachyphyllum. The cyclostratigraphic equivalent Stagecoach Road bed of the Shuttle Meadow Formation is a black calcareous mudstone with whole fossil fish and conhcostracans. The Lake Surprise Bed is a finely laminated black shale bed here with partly articulated Semionotus. The Vosseler bed is unfortunately very weathered and crumbly, although I have found articulated fish in it here.

STOP 4. Upper Feltville Formation and Preakness Basalt, William Paterson University.
Stratigraphic Units: Upper Feltville Formation, Preakness Basalt (flows 1 and 2)
Age: Earliest Jurassic (201.1 Ma)
1. Upper sandy Feltville Formation
2. Contact between Feltville and Preakness Basalt
3. Basal pillowed flow of Preakness Basalt (P-1)
4. Flow P-2 of Preakness basalt with low paleomagnetic inclinations
5. Largest single flow in world?
6. CO2 sequestering possibilities in basalt
Walk west from parking area about 290 ft to entrance to abandoned quarry on south side of West Overlook Ave head towards stream walking about 300 ft to open area of the old quarry.
Manspeizer (1980) described this locality in that year’s NYGSA guidebook noting the three basic units present. The upper Feltville Formation, a lower pillowed flow of the Preakness Basalt and a second massive and highly fractured flow of the Preakness Basalt. The Feltville Formation exposed in the old quarry and adjacent stream consists of interbedded tan and red sandstones and red and gray and purple siltstones. The latter contain sporomorphs and conifer fragments. In terms of the cyclostratigraphy of the Feltville this sequence is the interval of maximum precessional variability in the 100 ky cycle exhibiting the lowest precessional variability of its 405 ky cycle. The contact with the Preakness has a cyclostratigraphic age of about 201.1 Ma.
The basal flow of the Preakness as exposed here consists of a complex of pillowed basalts and the more massive flow lobes that fed the pillows all of which show considerable vesicularity. This is Preakness flow P-1 of Tollo & Gottfried (1992) and is a distinct and mappable unit extending at least from the ACE core transect to the north to near the border fault. It seems to absent from at least West Orange (I-280) to near Somerville, NJ, but reappears along I-275 at Pluckemin, NJ. I (Olsen, 1980a, 1980d) described outcrops of the lower flow but did not different it from the overlying flow P-2 of Tollo & Gottfried (1992). At this locality there is little or no visible metamorphic effect on the underlying Feltville Formation, which to be expected because P1 was extruded into water, presumably as deep as the thickness of the pillowed flow itself.
Proceed from the quarry up the hill on the north to West Overlook Avenue and then to the west to exposures of basalt. The contact between P-1 and Tollo & Gottfried’s (1992) flow P-2 can be seen here. P-2 is the very thick flow that is present all over the entire extent of the Preakness Basalt and is characterized by having an intense splintery or prismatic fracture (Faust, 1975) and gabbroid layers (Puffer & Volkert, 2001). Prévot & McWilliams (1989) noted that this flow has unusually low magnetic inclinations compared to the other Newark basin flows. They also found the same low inclinations in the second flow of the Hartford basin Holyoke Basalt and the Deerfield basin Deerfield Basalt. Hozik (1992) showed that the Sander Basalt shared the low inclinations unlike all the other basalts of the Culpeper basin. All of these low-inclination flows have the same chemistries (Puffer, 1992, 2003) and all have gabbroid segregations and all but the Deerfield Basalt have the characteristic splintery fracture. In the Hartford and Deerfield basins, a flow of similar chemistry but having a tendency to be pillowed is present below the flow with the low inclinations. As pointed out by Prévot & McWilliams (1989) these directions would seem to indicate correlation, and correlation within the time frame of secular variation, suggesting that these flows represent the same eruptive event of no more than 10s or 100s of years. The Sander flow with the low inclinations is over 200 m thick, and P-2 of the Preakness Basalt is more than 90 m thick, and if the flow extended from Massachusetts to Virginia, it would be on of the largest lava flows known on Earth. In terms of environmental effects, it is surely the rate as well as the magnitude that matters, and the eruption of this flow, if it was indeed one eruption, would have had significant environmental effects. The largest single flow of the Columbia River Basalt is on the order of 5000 km3 (Tolan et al., 1989), but if the Preakness and equivalents averaged 100 m in thickness, spanned 800 km along strike, and were 100 km wide prior to erosion, it would have a volume of 8000 km3. This does not include the area spanned by dikes of the same composition that extend well into Canada (McHone, 1996).
Flow P-1 is highly vesicular at this locality, and P-2 has very significant fracture porosity and permeability. As previously discussed, Goldberg et al. (2009) argue that carbonation reaction in porous zones of basalt could provide a significant locus for carbon sequestration. The large amount of porosity and permeability is obvious here, but whether that holds at depth has yet to be demonstrated.

STOP 5. Middle Towaco Formation, The Glen, Pompton, NJ.
Stratigraphic Units: Middle Towaco Formation, Colfax, The Glen, and Pines Lake Beds
Age: Early Jurassic (200.8 Ma)
1. Classic 19th century site never exploited
2. Well developed cyclicity
3. Basin margin facies
4. Lower trophic levels well represented
5. Species flocks of semionotid
6. Tracks
7. Pompton Tuff
8. Size of lakes
The Glen is a community reserve managed by the Pines Lakes Association. Visits to this site should always be coordinated through them.
About 65 m of the middle Towaco Formation extensively outcrops along the creek and its tributaries joining Pines Lakes and Pompton Lake (Figure 22), including the top of one Van Houten cycle, two complete cycles, and the lower half of another. Three deep-water units of the upper three successive Van Houten cycles outcrop in their entirety, with the cycles averaging about 25 m thick. These three beds are termed in succession, the Pines Lake Bed, the Glen Bed, and the Colfax Bed, corresponding to the designations P-5, P-4, and P-3 in Olsen et al. (1989) and papers by McCune, respectively.
The Glen was made known as a fossil locality by W. C. Redfield (1842) who reported on the lower two shales in succession producing fossil fish and intermediate strata producing reptile tracks. It is worth mentioning that William C. Redfield, was the first president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848 and great grandfather of Alfred C. Redfield of Redfield Ratio fame.
From the parking area, walk 0.2 mi southeast across bridge and turn west into woods to the west at the small tributary to the main stream. Proceed down hill about 135 ft along tributary to Station 1.
Station 1 is at approximately 40° 59.467'N, 74° 16.083'W. Exposed in the small run is the lowest deeper water unit, the Pines Lake Bed (P-5). This unit lies on gray sandstones and conglomerates with organically preserved roots, which in turn lie on red clastic rocks. The Pines Lakes Bed is a laminate, but is not micro-laminated and has rare whole fish and fish fragments. The most distinctive aspect of the bed is the presence of stromatolites around trees (Figure 23). These have been termed arboreal stromatolites by Whiteside (2004), which were a part of the assemblage of lacustrine primary producers. The Pines Lake Bed is presumably the lower of the two beds described by Redfield (1842), although he gives the distance to the next fish-bearing unit is 60 m (200 ft) while it is certainly closer to 25 m. Proceed downstream about 150 ft south to near where the stream turns west and then northwest to Station 2.
Station 2 is at about 40° 59.442'N, 74° 16.080'W. We have passed up section through gray mudstones, sandstones and minor conglomerate into reddish thin-bedded siltstones and very fine sandstones with abundant dinosaur footprints. Proceed downstream about 200 ft.
Station 3 is at 40° 59.454'N, 74° 16.116'W. Upsection from Station 3 we pass into presumably fluvial red sandstones and minor mudstones comprising the shallow water portion of the lower Van Houten cycle. The upper beds of this red sequence becomes finer grained and more highly organized. This red sequence is the interval mentioned by Redfield (1842) as being quarried by Peter M. Ryerson, Esq., of Pompton, NJ. This interval produced several dinosaur tracks, all brontozooids.
Continue downstream about 500 ft.
Station 4 is at approximately 40° 59.532'N, 74° 16.164'W at the point that the bluff comes down to near the level of the creek. Here, The Glen Bed is exposed at an accessible level. This is the upper fish-bearing unit mentioned by Redfield (1841). It is also the site of a quarry opened in 1980 by McCune and PEO, and excavated by Amy R. McCune (McCune, 1982, 1986, 1987a, 1986b, 1990, 1996, 1997, 2004).
The lower transgressive portion of this Van Houten cycle (paraphrased from Olsen et al., 1989) is characterized by an overall fining-upward trend from wave-reworked conglomerates into oscillatory rippled sandstones and siltstones. The high-stand sequence begins with oscillatory-rippled siltstones, passes rapidly into laminated siltstones with pinch-and-swell laminae, and then up into a thick micro-laminated interval showing silt-carbonate couplets and many sub-millimeter to decimeter thick graded distal lacustrine turbidites. One turbidite has rare 1-2 cm diameter pebbles at its base. The total organic carbon content of these beds is relatively low compared to the finer facies of the Towaco, averaging less than 2% by weight. Complete, well-preserved fossil fishes are abundant in these beds (see below). The transition into overlying non-micro-laminated silts is abrupt, as is the correlative disappearance of fish.
A peculiar feature of several decimeters of this sequence is the presence of white to tan irregular flattened objects in some of the finest micro-laminated beds. Many shapes have cuspate edges or apparent holes, while others are more rod, vermiform, or even hairlike (Figure 24). The simplest explanation of this material is that it represents devitrified and flattened tephra, largely pumice particles that fell into the lake or were washed in from accumulations along shore. The latter interpretation makes more sense because these particles are so abundant on so many laminae. However, the presence of such foamy pyroclastics implies silicic eruptions which have not yet been documented in the CAMP
Sandstone and conglomerate at the transition into the strongly regressive and lowstand portions of the cycle exhibit features suggesting wave-reworking (Smoot, 2010), including virtually all the features described by LeTourneau (1985a,1985b), such as oscillatory ripples, "fitted fabric" of pebbles and cobbles, oriented plant debris. and well sorted layers and patches of sand, granules, and pebbles. Also present are small lenses of oscillatory-rippled sandstone nestled in well-sorted conglomerate beds. Organically preserved roots, and dinosaur footprints are present. Higher in the low-stand interval, the conglomerates appear fluvial in origin, although they remain to be examined in detail. These are comprise the thick sequence of conglomerate (Figure 22) referred to by Redfield (1842) as the, "variegated calcareous conglomerate" of Rogers.
Decimeter-scale folds are prominent in the micro-laminated portions of this cycle. They could be subaqueous slump folds, but additional work done by McCune and PEO in the early 1980s, shows they are nappe-like drag folds of thrust faults propagating upward through major portions of the micro-laminated unit. These folds show large amounts of thickening in their hinges, which are often cut by small faults. The fault-adjacent limbs are often sheared out, although completely overturned bedding is locally present. Fish are deformed within these folds, shortened where they are perpendicular to the fold axis and elongated when they are parallel to it (Figure 25). The thrusts themselves are slickensided and sometimes polished, and they sole into bedding plane shear zones. The ductile behavior of the beds and the extremely low thermal maturity of the contained hydrocarbons (Pratt el al., 1988) demands that this thrust faulting and folding be early in the burial history of the units, prior to complete lithification, but after significant burial. An implication of these folds is that the deepwater unit is considerably structurally thickened.
On the basis of the collection of over 1700 fish made here (Figure 26), McCune described 21 species of Semionotus from the micro-laminated deep-water part of this cycle, and suggested that a large proportion of them might have evolved in situ, endemic to this single lake, analogous to the endemic cichlid fishes of the African great lakes. McCune surveyed more than 2000 museum specimens from 45 localities in eastern North America and showed that six of the species in the Glen Bed were not found in deposits equal in age to or older and thus evolved within the lake level rise and high stand of the Glen Bed, with eight species occurring in older deposits and plausibly supplying the colonizing species. The evidence for seven species was equivocal. McCune (1990) showed that about 5.5% of the specimens have anomalous dorsal ridge scale patterns mixed in with otherwise stereotypic dorsal-ridge-scale patterns, and that dorsal-ridge-scale anomalies are significantly more frequent in older than in younger sediments of the Glen Bed, which she interpreted as being the result of relaxed selection during the early colonization of the lake. Results of McCune’s analysis from the Glen Bed are shown in Figure 27.
Proceed over the ridge in which the quarry is located and walk about 240 ft to the west to the large north-northwest-flowing tributary to the main creek and then proceed about 360 ft south-southwest along the tributary to the large outcrops of the Colfax Bed laminite.
Station 5 is at about 40° 59.454'N, 74° 16.164'W. Here are outcrops of the Van Houten cycle bearing the Colfax Bed. The Colfax bed is similar to the Glen Bed. It is, however, much less studied. The lower few meters of the laminite have more silt and are thrown into even more folds than are present in the Glen Bed. Fish are not abundant in the Colfax Bed, but this could be because so much of the outcrop is deformed. So far only semionotids have been found.
This is the type section of the Pompton Tuff. After discovery of the small airfall ash in the East Berlin Formation (Olsen et al., 2005), I hypothesized it should be present in the Towaco Formation in the Colfax Bed, based on correlations described by Olsen et al., (1989) and Olsen et al., (1996b). Despite the fact that I had examined the Colfax Bed many times in the last 30 years, I had not noticed any ash layer. However, once knowing where to look, Gustaf I. Olsen and I found it on October 9, 2008 at this site (Figure 28). The ash is thus named after this locality, the Pompton Tuff. Subsequently, I examined the same cycle in the ACE cores and identified the tuff in ACE cores C-128 and PT-14. In the Hartford basin there are abundant conchostracans belonging to the genus Bublimnadia. Conchostracans had never been found in the Towaco Formation before but careful examination of the micro-laminated interval in the homotaxial position above the Pompton Tuff revealed the same forms (Figure 29). These are representative of the lower trophic levels of consumers.
The extreme similarity in details of the Colfax Bed in terms of lake level phase, conchostracans, and the position of the Pompton Tuff in the correlative Westfield Bed in the Hartford basin would seem unusual in two isolated lakes with separate watersheds. Such similarity would not be surprising if the Colfax and Westfield beds were deposited by the same lake. If they were the deposited by the same lake and this lake extended to the Culpeper basin, it would be larger than the American or African great lakes, or Lake Baikal, as previously discussed.

Extensive exposures of Passaic Formation conglomerates.

Exposures of Palisade diabase.

Continue to follow US-9W S following strike of the Palisade sill.