A6: NEW INSIGHTS ON RIFT BASIN DEVELOPMENT AND THE GEOLOGICAL CARBON CYCLE, MASS EXTINCTION, AND CARBON SEQUESTRATION FROM OUTCROPS, AND NEW CORE, DRILL HOLES AND SEISMIC LINES FROM THE NORTHERN NEWARK BASIN (NY AND NJ)
Paul E. Olsen, Sean T. Kinney, Natalia V. Zakharova
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Palisades, NY 10968
Roy W. Schlische, Martha O. Withjack
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Rutgers University
Piscataway, NJ 08854
Dennis v. Kent
and
David S. Goldberg
Brian E. Slater
New York State Museum
Albany, NY 12230
INTRODUCTION
The Carbon Cycle, Global Environments, and the Sedimentary Record It is a viable theory that in the big picture, much of Earth’s geological record of is, in one way or another, a reflection of changes in the carbon cycle, itself uniquely (as far as we know in THIS solar system) and profoundly a reflection of life. Plausibly, because of the interplay between photosynthesis, weathering, CO2, radiative balance, and the thermal gradient of the crust and mantle, the Earth is the only body around our Sun with granite and plate tectonics (Sleep, 2012) and the only body with an atmosphere with significant O2 (Sleep, 2012). This field trip will view the Newark Basin (Fig. 1) and its sedimentary and biotic record though this lens of the carbon cycle. The fact that there is a Newark rift valley at all and that it is filled with largely red beds reflects this profound difference of our planet compared to our companions. Even the packaging of the Newark Basin sedimentary sequence, which is so profoundly cyclical and clearly paced by variations in the Earth’s orbit, seemingly entirely extrinsic to the intrinsic Earth system, must reflect a very strong, nonlinear amplification by feedbacks between the carbon cycle and climate. Finally, the end-Triassic mass extinction (ETE) appears to be an example of a carbon cycle perturbation caused by tectonics – the eruption of the giant Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) pumping CO2 and SO2 into the atmosphere. These same rocks may be part of our effort to sequester anthropogenic CO2, itself a product of combustion of a half a billion years of photosynthetic natural carbon sequestration. The fact that the eruptions could occur at all may be a function of the same thermal gradient reflecting the radiative balance that makes our planet hospitable. Much of the theory of the Earth as it relates to life and the carbon cycle is on the fringe of knowledge, but it is useful to ponder how these things might work in order to frame testable hypotheses that may not only help us understand the Earth system from the seemingly arcane vantage of the Newark basin, but also frame hypotheses that have practical consequence for our future.

A6: NEW INSIGHTS ON RIFT BASIN DEVELOPMENT AND THE GEOLOGICAL CARBON CYCLE, MASS EXTINCTION, AND CARBON SEQUESTRATION FROM OUTCROPS, AND NEW CORE, DRILL HOLES AND SEISMIC LINES FROM THE NORTHERN NEWARK BASIN (NY AND NJ)
P.E.Olsen, S.T.Kinney, N.V.Zakharova, R.W.Schlische, M.O.Withjack, D.V.Kent, D.S.Goldberg, B.E.Slater

STOP 1-1. Cores, Seismic Lines and Posters at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY
Here we will examine cores, down-hole logs, seismic profiles, and some fossils from the New Jersey portion of the Newark Basin and in a more central position. These will relate directly to the outcrops will see after this stop.
Newark Basin Coring Project (NBCP) and Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) Cores
Stockton Formation - Princeton NBCP core and TW4: The facies of the Stockton Formation as seen in the Princeton core is closely comparable to the outcrops of the type area of the Stockton Formation near Stockton, New Jersey. Thick intervals of purplish, tan, and gray sandstone and minor conglomerate are interspersed with bioturbated red mudstone and muddy sandstone. Pedogenic features including cracks, slickensides, carbonate nodules, rhizoliths (root traces), and burrows are abundant.
Compare the red mudstone facies of the Stockton Formation in the Princeton Core with typical red mudstone from the nominal Stockton Formation of the TW4 core. Note that the huge sand-filled cracks seen in the TW4 mudstones are not seen in Princeton core mudstones. Also note the difference in color with the higher color saturation and slight purple tint of the TW4 mudstone. The TW4 facies resembles the nominal Stockton we will see in outcrop at Stop 1.2 (Fig. 24).
Lockatong Formation - Nursery and Princeton NBCP cores: Cores and logs: intervals of cores of exactly correlative lacustrine (Van Houten) cycles will be on display. Observe the decrease in thickness and change in facies from the Nursery core to Princeton, corresponding to the up-dip relationship between Nursery and Princeton and how that projects towards the hanging-wall side of the basin – the Granton Quarry area (Stops 1.3 and 1.5).
Also on display will be examples from these same cores of the lower Lockatong Formation, which changes dramatically in facies between Nursery and Princeton with correlation based on the magnetostratigraphy.
The trend from Nursery to Princeton is from thicker to thinner cycles, from finer to coarser grain, and a tendency for the lower Lockatong cycles to be replaced by red beds and tan and gray sandstone. This trend continues and is exaggerated from the Princeton area towards the northeast towards our field stops.
Passaic Formation – Somerset, Rutgers, and Titusville NBCP cores: Examples of stratigraphic overlap between the Rutgers and Titusville cores illustrates an extreme examples of lateral continuity. In particular are two siltstone layers only a few cm thick correlative between the two coring sites separated by 42 km. There is also a polarity transition just below these siltstones that serves as a corroboration of the hypothesis of correlation.
Examples of the single black-mudstone-bearing Van Houten cycle near the base of the Kilmer Member from the Somerset and Rutgers cores (11.5 km apart) will be on display. Note slight change in facies. As in the case above there is a polarity transition below and close to the base of this cycle and the base of the Member.
Passaic Formation and Orange Mountain Basalt – Martinsville core and ACE core PT-38: The upper few tens of meters of the Passaic Formation and its contact with the overlying Orange Mountain Basalt will be shown. The interval on display in the two cores contains the base of the Exeter Member of the Passaic Formation, the remarkably continuous and thin polarity zone E23r, and the projected level of the ETE. At first glance there is not much to suggest anything particularly momentous is going on here. However, correlation between the Jacksonwald Syncline section (Exeter) in the southwestern Newark Basin, from where most of the pre-ETE and ETE biological data come from, and the Martinsville, ACE cores, and exposures (Stop 1.7) is highly corroborated by cyclostratigraphy (the deep water phase of lacustrine cycle at base of the Exeter Member, polarity zone E23r, and the base of the Orange Mountain Basalt.
There is scant biological data from the cores themselves, no sporomorphs, for example; however, the spinocaudatan (clam shrimp) Shipingia olseni is present within the fine mudstones in E23r in the Martinsville core, consistent with its presence in the Jacksonwald Syncline section (Kozur and Weems, 2005). Supposedly, the presence of this taxon is indicative of a Norian age and is the principle basis for the argument that a major hiatus, spanning millions of years, is present between the base Exeter Member and what we identify as the ETE (Kozur and Weems, 2005; 2010; Tanner and Lucas, 2015).
The key observation supporting the hiatus as stated by Kozur and Weems (2011) is that, “…the upper Norian faunas were dominated by very large conchostracans, while the Rhaetian (and Hettangian) conchostracan faunas are everywhere composed of very small forms.” The lack of the early and middle Rhaetian clam shrimp zones and the presence of the large Shipingia just below the ETE in Newark Supergroup strata led to the hypothesis of this major hiatus. However, their hypothesis is falsified by the discovery of abundant large cf. S. olseni in late Rhaetian, largely marine strata in the North Germanic Basin underlain by strata contains the middle to late Rhaetian bivalve Rhaetavicula contorta and overlain by basal Liassic strata with psilocerid ammonites (Olsen and Kent, 2016).
Kent et al. (2016) note that, “…the recorded presence of the very short (∼10 ka) Chron E23r immediately below CAMP basalts in three entirely separate basins, namely Newark (Kent and Olsen, 1999; Kent et al., 1995; Olsen et al., 1996a), Fundy (Deenen et al., 2011) and Argana (Deenen et al., 2010), makes such a major regional hiatus untenable. This is because the hiatus would require essentially identical intervals of non-deposition and/or erosion in all of these basins, so that somehow deposition halted just after or else each section was eroded to variable depths exactly down to just above Chron E23r, the shortest identified chron in the Newark-Hartford APTS. But not to be deterred, (Tanner and Lucas, 2015) do not regard such an argument as precluding a regional unconformity and speculate that a late Rhaetian episode of uplift along the entire rift axis might somehow have caused such precisely timed non-deposition or erosion of the exposed strata in all of the rift valleys prior to the flood basalt eruptions.”
Examine the cores, and see if you can spot if there is any physical evidence for a hiatus.
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 Jacksonwald syncline to 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 conglomeritic 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 crocodile-line tracks such as Brachychirotherium and Apatopus, while outcrops adjacent to the location of PT-38 have produced a post-initial-ETE assemblage of sparse sporomophs and macrofossil plants, and abundant footprints (Stop 1.7).
Preakness Basalt – ACE core PTI-3 and Lucent Technologies core MW-21D: ACE core PTI-3 was described by Tollo et al. (1990) and Tollo & Gottfried (1992). It contains both the pillowed lowest flow of the Preakness Basalt and the lower part of the second flow with the characteristic platy-prismatic jointing that we will see in exposures at Stops 1.8 and 2.5. Lucent Technologies core MW-21D was cored in New Providence, NJ adjacent to the Lucent Technologies (formerly Bell Labs) complex at Berkeley Heights, NJ at 40.688342°, -74.396989°. This core site is 1.7 km northeast from the site (40.676546°, -74.409439°) from which Blackburn et al. (2013) obtained a zircon U-Pb CA ID-TIMS, Thorium-corrected 238U-206Pb age of 201.274±0.032 Ma from a gabbroid float in a stream cut of Preakness Basalt. Several well-developed gabbroid layers are present in Core MW-21D and samples from this core produced an indistinguishable, although as yet unpublished, age (T. Blackburn and J. Ramezani, pers. com., 2014). There is a small gabbroid roadside exposure directly in-line and between these two sites at (40.677774°, -74.408121°) from which we have a sample that will be on display.
This Preakness date along with others from intrusions associated with the other basalt flow formations of the Newark Basin, tested and precisely corroborated the hypothesis that the cyclicity seen in the syn-CAMP lacustrine strata was astronomically paced. The durations of the sequences between basalt flow formation based on U-Pb dates provided by Blackburn et al. (2013) are indistinguishable from the astrochronological estimates derived from Olsen et al. (1996b) and Whiteside et al. (2007).
P.E.Olsen, S.T.Kinney, N.V.Zakharova, R.W.Schlische, M.O.Withjack, D.V.Kent, D.S.Goldberg, B.E.Slater

Passing TW4 core site at left
Passing TW4 core site at left at (41.002829°, -73.910658°)
P.E.Olsen, S.T.Kinney, N.V.Zakharova, R.W.Schlische, M.O.Withjack, D.V.Kent, D.S.Goldberg, B.E.Slater

PIP follows ridge crest of the Palisades cuesta
Palisades Interstate Parkway follows ridge crest of the Palisades cuesta at about 1/3 stratigraphic thickness of the sill.

Road follows a small fault with normal separation
This road follows a small fault with normal separation that offsets the Palisades ridge line, dropping down to the left.

STOP 1-2. Ross Dock Picnic Area. Fort Lee, NJ
Here we will examine strata below locally exposed Lockatong Formation that is intruded by the Palisades Sill. Then we will look at the olivine zone on the way back to the bus.
Walk south along the path next to the river to its termination at the south tip of the park. At several places we will look at mudstones and sandstones of the Stockton. Walk 960 yards south along the river path to beneath the George Washington Bridge. Continue 887 yards farther south looking for outcrops at head height on the right (west) of the path. Depending on the plant cover you will see variegated (tan purple and red) cross-bedded arkosic sandstones and minor conglomerate interbedded with massive, intensely red-purple mudstone. The mudstone is cut by numerous large and deep ptygmatic sandstone-filled cracks that are often vertically boudinaged. This is the same facies we see in TW4 below the possible Lockatong (Stop 1.1).

Phytosaur locality
At the end of the path along the Hudson is part of a set outcrops of some notoriety, having been the subject of page one of the 1910 Christmas Day pictorial section of the New York Times, entitled, “When the Giant Dinosaur Walked Down Broadway”. Never mind that it was not a giant, or a dinosaur, or on Broadway! It is in fact a partial disarticulated postcranial skeleton of a large phytosaur (semi-aquatic, non-archosaur, crocodile-mimic pseudosuchian) that was recovered at the water's edge (Fig. 25) on private land then owned by the “three Goetschius brothers” just south of the park boundary. It appears to have come from the transition between an overlying arkose and red mudstone. The specimen was discovered in March or April of 1910 by Jesse E. Hyde, Daniel D. Condit, and Albert C. Boyle Jr., who were at the time graduate students of Prof. James F. Kemp of Columbia University (Hyde, 1911). They contacted Barnum Brown and W. D. Matthew at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. The specimen was collected by Brown for the AMNH over a two-week period in late December 1910, after a few months of negotiations with the land owners. The phytosaur locality has been misidentified in most published reports, and was cited by the New York Times (December 21, 1910) as being "a half-mile south of the George Washington Bridge, opposite 155th St.”, even though 155th St is closer to one mile south of the bridge! However Matthew (1911) and Hyde (1911) state that the specimen is from opposite 160th St., which is approximately 1/2 mile south of the bridge and there are outcrops still present on private land at (40.844472°, -73.965003°); The specimen is also commonly referred to as the "Fort Lee phytosaur", although it is actually from Edgewater. The specimen (AMNH 4991; Fig. 27) consists of several posterior dorsal, sacral, and anterior caudal vertebrae, both femora, tibiae, and fibulae, a few dorsal ribs, many gastralia, and numerous osteoderms. Huene (1913) described the specimen and named it Rutiodon manhattanensis. Based on the structure of the ilium, the generic assignment is correct (Huber and Lucas, 1993; Huber et al., 1993) but the specimen is indeterminate at the species level. This is the only vertebrate reported from this facies, but it suggests that further exploration might prove fruitful. AMNH 4991 is currently on exhibit in the Hall of Vertebrate Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Take the switchback path that works its way up the hill to Henry Hudson Drive and proceed south toward the intersection with Main Street (Fort Lee) and the entrance to the park.

Weathered olivine zone of the Palisade Sill
Exposure on the north side of road has weathering profile of the olivine zone that can be clearly seen here. The olivine zone is weathered to a very crumbly diabase that, according to Naslund (1998), still has many fresh looking olivine crystals. The olivine zone is about 10 to 15 m above the base of the Palisades Sill and its weathering produces an obvious bench along the escarpment, essentially paralleling the lower contact of the sill, as observed by Walker (1969).
Proceed north along the base of the sill on Henry Hudson Drive, keep track of the bench and note where sedimentary strata at the base of the sill are exposed. Also note the faint and fine layering visible on the diabase surfaces near the base of the sill. Beware of vehicles!

Slightly discordant base of sill and metamorphosed Lockatong Formation
The thin-bedded to massive metamorphosed mudstones and siltstones, interbedded with tan arkosic sandstone, is typical of the lower Lockatong in this part of the basin, and it shows unequivocally that the red and tan units along the river are stratigraphically lower than Lockatong Formation. Of interest here is that as the sill cuts lower in the section, at either side of this outcrop, the strata become disrupted and the finer-grained appear to behave more competently while the coarser beds appear to have liquefied and partially and chaotically mixed with the diabase (Fig. 26). Note that the topographic bench tracking the olivine zone appears to bump upward here.
Proceed north under the George Washington Bridge. The road basically follows the base of the sill.

Razor-edged contact between sill and Lockatong Formation
Probably the best and most accessible contact between the Palisades Sill and underlying meta-sediments is here, where the contact tends to be planar, and very sharp, and although predominantly concordant, locally hops up or down in stratigraphy tens of centimeters. Note that over most of the exposure there is very little evidence of melting or assimilation and that fine-scale sedimentary structures are well-preserved despite proximity to the sill.
While these rocks are gray to nearly black, they contain no organic carbon. North along this same road, past the circle (at 40.862042°, -73.955783°), are exposures of similarly metamorphosed Lockatong Formation in a part of the stratigraphy (cycles W-5 and W-6 of the Nursery Member) that has been traced along the base of the sill to Hoboken and correlated with the NBCP cores (Olsen, 1980c; Olsen et al., 1989; 1996a). Away from the sill, the fossiliferous (clam shrimp, ostrcodes, fish, and rare reptiles), micro-laminated portions of the cycles have total organic carbon contents of 3 to 8 % (Manspeizer & Olsen, 1981), but here have essentially 0% organic carbon. Prior to larger scale metamorphism by the intrusions, the organic carbon content was probably in excess of 10%. This carbon, originally in the form of kerogen, was thermally cracked eventually to gas, finally methane and CO2, presumably with 13C-depleted isotopic ratios (δ13C of ∼-28‰). These greenhouse gasses made their way into the atmosphere, but whether they did so catastrophically, contributing to the ETE greenhouse crisis and “initial isotopic excursion”, or whether they leaked out slowly and assimilated without incident is unknown, although signs of disruption by escaping gas are certainly not obvious.

Reclaimed quarry in lower Palisades Sill at traffic circle
In this old quarry, the olivine zone is marked by a zone of deflected columns in the cliff face in fresh rock. Naslund (1998) notes flow banding is present within the olivine zone. You can project that zone of deflected column into the benchmarking the weathered olivine zone. What might the evidence be that the olivine zone represents a separate intrusive event or separate major pulse as suggested by Husch (1990), Puffer et al. (2009), and Block et al. (2015), and can you see any of the evidence here?

Several exposures of Lockatong and Stockton formations
There are several exposures of Lockatong and Stockton formations along the base of the Palisades Sill along this route, described in Olsen (1980c). Keep left to stay on River Road. On Gorge Road to the right are excellent exposures of Lockatong Formation described by Olsen (1980c, 2003) and Colbert & Olsen (2001). These allowed the section at Granton Quarry above the Palisade Sill (Stop 1-5) to be concatenated with that of the sections below the sill.

STOP 1-3. Churchill Road Exposure of Dramatically discordant sill and Lockatong, North Bergen, NJ
This is a very large, virtually unstudied exposure of a dramatically discordant contact between the Palisade Sill and the Lockatong Formation (Fig. 27). “Measured” using GoogleEarthTM (which has large uncertainties in altitude) the shear face of the wall is about 39 m. Using this as a guide, and accounting for parallax (non-quantitatively), about 23.5 m of Lockatong is exposed and the sill cuts down through it all towards the southeast. About three large cycles, each consisting of a couplet of a complex of prominent tan sandstone beds and complex of mudstone beds, are present averaging about 7.8 m thick.
Given that the average thickness of a 20 kyr cycle in this area is about 1.5 m (Olsen, 2001), consistent with smaller scale alternations of laminated and non-laminated mudstones at this outcrop, it would suggest the larger cycle is an expression of the short eccentricity (∼100 ka cycles). We will see more of this pattern at Granton Quarry at Stop 1.5.
Strata near the contact are deformed in a variety of ways. There are a number of blobby diabase intrusions that warp the surrounding strata, as well as several sheet-like ones that extend far from the main diabase body, and a series of small thrust faults (Fig. 27). This outcrop is very similar to that at Kings Bluff at Weehawken (Darton, 1890; Olsen, 1980c), except even more dramatic (Fig. 27). From here to the south near Weehaken, the base of the sill sits below the lowest well-developed mudstones on nominal Stockton Formation (Stop 1.4, below).

STOP 1-4. Palisades Sill contact with nominal Stockton Formation, North Bergen, NJ
OHM 2020: Coordinates are the same as for previous stop, so I ignored them. This is the Walgreen's parking lot.
This is another very large virtually unstudied exposure this time of largely concordant contact between the sill and underling Stockton Formation strata. “Measured” by GoogleEarthTM, the cliff face is about 51 m high (consistent with topographic map) (Fig. 28). Based on photographs and accounting for parallax (non-quantitatively) about 14 m of mostly tan and white arkosic sandstone and minor pebbly sandstone with a minor bed of olive-gray sandy mudstone are exposed here below the sill. Several tan arkosic xenoliths are present, one of which remains attached at its south end, making a flame-like structure (Fig. 28). This outcrop has been described by Zakharova et al. (2016) and this specific xenolith compared with the arkosic xenolith in core TW4 (Stop 2-1).
This facies of tan arkosic sandstone is common below and in part above, typical Lockatong Formation. To the north it seems to inter-finger with purple and red mudstones. While we are calling this Stockton Formation, it is unclear if it is a lateral facies equivalent of the lowest Lockatong or time equivalent to part of the Stockton as it is represented in the central Newark basin.

Driving down dip-slope of Palisade cuesta

STOP 1-5. Granton Quarry exposures of Lockatong Formation and Granton Sill, North Bergen, NJ
Leave vehicles and proceed to northeast corner of store. The following is adopted from Olsen (2003).
In the northeastern Newark basin, the outcrop belt of the Lockatong on both sides of the Palisades sill along the Hudson River is remarkably rich in vertebrate fossils, despite varying degrees of contact metamorphism. In this region, virtually all fine-grained facies and all cycles have some vertebrate body fossils. Here, only the Princeton, Nursery, and Ewing Creek members of the Lockatong Formation have been positively identified. The Granton Quarry is the most famous of all the fossil localities in this belt and, in fact, the entire Newark Basin.
Remnants of the old Granton Quarry are preserved between the new Lowes Home Building Center on the south and Tonnelle Plaza (Hartz Mountain Industries) on the north. Granton Quarry was actively quarried for road metal, fill and rip rap during the 1950s and 1960s and was abandoned by 1970, whereafter it was slowly consumed by commercial developments and warehouses. Nonetheless, excellent exposures remain. The site has produced, and continues to produce, extraordinarily abundant fossils, especially vertebrates, and it is certainly one of the richest sites in North America for the Triassic (Fig. 29). This is also the best locality on this trip to see the details of Lockatong-type Van Houten cycles. Eleven such cycles with a thin-bedded to laminated division 2 are exposed on the sill-capped hill: seven are exposed on the south-facing exposure (Fig. 30) where we will see them first (40.807058°, -74.017908°), three additional cycles are exposed on the east-facing exposure; and all 11 cycles are exposed on the north-facing exposure, which is where we will examine them in more detail (40.807380°, -74.017774°). The base of the section appears to be 38-46 m above the contact with the Palisades Sill (Van Houten, 1969). This contact may be close to what was, prior to intrusion, the local Stockton-Lockatong formational contact. This section has been described in several papers including Van Houten (1969), Olsen (1980c; 2003), Olsen et al. (1989), and Colbert and Olsen (2001).
According to Van Houten (1969), these Lockatong hornfels include calc-silicate varieties in the middle carbonate-rich part, and extensively feldspathized and recrystallized diopside-rich arkose in the upper part. Some beds of arkose show well-developed cross-bedding. Because of the buff arkose at the top of nearly every cycle, these are the most visually-graphic of the detrital cycles seen on this field trip. Here, the many correlated changes occurring though individual cycles can be easily seen (Fig. 30).
Cycles G3 and G7 (Fig. 30) have produced representatives of all the known skeletal remains of Lockatong vertebrates, except definitive examples of the holostean Semionotus. The basal portions of division 2 of both of these cycles have extremely high densities of fossil fish, especially the coelacanth Osteopleurus newarki (Schaeffer, 1952). Small reptiles are also surprisingly abundant, and many important fish and unique reptile skeletons have been discovered here by dedicated amateurs and donated to various museums through the years (Colbert, 1965; 1966; Colbert and Olsen, 2001; Olsen et al., 1989; Schaeffer, 1952; Schaeffer and Mangus, 1971). Without a doubt, the three most spectacular skeletons of small reptiles found in the Lockatong Formation come from this site. These include the type specimen of the bizarre "deep-tailed swimmer", Hypuronector limnaios (Colbert and Olsen, 2001), the peculiarly-abundant and sexually dimorphic, tanystropheid Tanytrachelos ahynis (Olsen, 1979), and the gliding lepidosauromorph Icarosaurus seifkeri (Colbert, 1966) (Fig. 29). Larger remains occur as well, of which the most spectacular is the skull of a juvenile rutiodontine phytosaur (Fig. 29), but isolated phytosaur bones and teeth are fairly common and isolated vertebrae of a metoposaur amphibian also been found. This biotic assemblage is very different than that seen in post-ETE strata, but some of the elements are present just before the ETE, including phytosaurs and tanystropheids, both based on footprints in the Newark – Apatopus and Gwynnedichnium, respectively.
Cycles G8 through G11 overlap with the section on the east side of the Palisades Sill as exposed at Stop 4, as has been previously noted. A prediction of this correlation is that cycle W0 should be equivalent to G11. Examination of the easternmost outcrops at Granton Quarry of cycle G11 show that this is indeed the case. In fact, this cycle is distinctive in having a very pyrite-rich division 2 that has strikingly bright yellow and orange clay seams on weathering, a feature not seen in other Granton Quarry cycles. With the sections from both sides of the Palisades Sill combined, it is now possible to look at trends in lithology and biota at the scale of from a few thousand years (within one Van Houten cycle) to over 1 million years (i.e. three McLaughlin cycles) (Fig. 31).
Van Houten cycles thin to an average of about 1.5 m in this region, and at least some cycles from the drier phases of the 404 ky McLaughlin cycles appear to be entirely missing or replaced by tan arkose, accounting for the disproportionally low (18m) thickness of McLaughlin cycles in this area. If they scaled to the Van Houten cycles that are easily recognized, the McLaughlin Cycle should be ∼20 x 1.5 m = 30 m thick. The couplets (i.e. varves) of micro-laminated mudstones are thinner than their counterparts towards the center of the basin, but not in proportion to the thickness of the cycles, again suggesting a preferential omission of drier facies in each cycle.
This is an extension of the same thickness and coarsening trend in the Lockatong Formation that we have seen going from the Titusville to Nursery to Princeton NBCP cores (Stop 1-1). It is consistent with thinning onto the hinge margin of a half graben growth structure and incompatible with the strict version of the Broad Terrane hypothesis. The “missing” cycles and corresponding thinning of the McLaughlin cycles is consistent with offlap and bypassing on the hinge margin during lake lowstands and is also inconsistent with the strict version of the Broad Terrane. In fact, projecting that trend to the east and north, one would expect the Lockatong Formation to thin further and disappear entirely into sandstones, becoming unrecognizable, which is exactly what it does.
The stratigraphic sequence in the Hackensack Meadowlands, underlying the Granton sill to the west of the sill’s dip slope, consists of arkosic tan sandstones, overlain by black shales (that surely represent much of the remainder of the Lockatong Formation), which are in turn overlain by red mudstones of the Passaic Formation (Parker, 1993). If something like the average accumulation rate, based on the thickness of the Princeton, Nursery, and Ewing Creek members in the vicinity of North Bergen and Edgewater (i.e. 18 m/McLaughlin cycle), was maintained upward to the position of the Graters Member of the Passaic Formation (encountered in a boring; Lovegreen, 1974 cited in Parker, 1993), there is sufficient stratigraphic thickness in this area for the rest of the Lockatong and basal Passaic Formation.
At the south-facing exposures, cycles G1 and G2 are injected by diabase of the 20 m thick Granton sill (Van Houten, 1969), another component of the CAMP, which has protected the Lockatong Formation from erosion in this area. Because this sill is thin, and the Palisade Sill fairly remote stratigraphically, much of the sedimentary rock is not as metamorphosed as under the sill; some cycles still have considerable organic matter, especially noticeable in cycle G3 which on the south side of the Quarry is black with significant organic matter (Maliconico, 2010), but has little or none at the north end, where we are looking. The change in bone color tracks the thermal maturity as well: black where relatively low and white where high. Perhaps, the sandstones interbedded with the formerly organic-rich mudstones could act as conduits in the up-dip direction, venting methane and CO2 into the atmosphere.

STOP 1-6. Passaic Formation and Copper Prospect at Lyndhurst, New Jersey
Leave vehicles and proceed to view the adjacent exposures. The following is modified from Olsen et al. (2004).
We have moved considerably up section from earlier stops as well as deeper towards the depositional center of the basin, although we are still in a marginal facies. These exposures reveal most of the Kilmer Member of the Passaic Formation (∼210 Ma, NBTS) ( Fig. 4) exposed on the east side of a prominent ridge marking the western border of the New Jersey Meadowlands. This ridge is characterized by a heterogeneous assemblage of red mudstones and sandstones. However, there are a few purple and gray units present, and the eastern and stratigraphically lowest of these is parsimoniously interpreted as marking the base of the Kilmer Member (Fig. 4).
The Passaic Formation, characterized by extremely widespread units with a particularly well-developed “layer cake”-style stratigraphy, marks a stage in the tectonic evolution of the Newark rifts. Based on the very slow rates of thickening towards the faulted margins of the basin (Stop 1.1; Withjack et al., 2013), extension rates were slowing, the basin was filling towards its outlet, and the basin floors were extraordinarily wide and flat. The red Passaic and other central Pangean equivalents are the strata that most people think of when they think Triassic. At yet a broader scale, the Passaic marks an interval where basins deeper within the arid belt and closer to the rifting axis began to receive considerable amounts of brine of marine origin with the consequent development of thick evaporite sequences (e.g. Osprey Salt of the Canadian Maritime margin).
Based on correlation to the central Newark Basin, albeit tentative, the exposures at this stop reveal the uppermost few meters of member T-U and the lower half of the Kilmer Member (Fig. 4). In the central Newark basin, the basal Kilmer Member includes a prominent Van Houten cycle with a well-developed black division 2. In the region around New Brunswick (NJ), this black shale and the underlying division 1 of this cycle are often rich in copper minerals, particularly chalcopyrite. At these outcrops in the northeastern Newark basin, the same Van Houten cycle apparently lacks black shale, instead having a purple shale with associated tan or white sandstones. The unit is still copper-mineralized, at least locally, and where intruded by thin diabase sills (2.2 mi) to the south-southeast in North Arlington (NJ), it was commercially exploited in what is supposed to be the oldest copper mine in North America – the Schuyler mine (Lewis, 1907). The exposures at this stop are almost certainly the prospect mentioned by Woodward (1944) on the Kingsland estate (located at - 40.8064893°, -74.1109759° inspired by the Schuyler mine but never worked extensively. An exploratory shaft at least was opened, and the now-cemented entrance is still visible. Tan and white sandstones associated with purple and gray mudstone are exposed and mineralized with the same minerals as at the Schuyler mine, including chalcocite (black copper sulfide), chrysocolla (bluish-green copper silicate), malachite (green copper carbonate), and azurite (blue copper carbonate). It is noteworthy that there is no evidence of diabase at this location because the presence of an intrusive diabase sill has been used as an explanation for the copper mineralization at the Schuyler mine (e.g., Woodward, 1944).
The overall section at this stop consists of lower red massive mudstones of member T-U, followed by the tan and white sandstones surrounding a purple well-bedded mudstone of the basal part of the Kilmer Member. This is succeeded by massive red mudstones, a well-bedded interval, and then red mudstones and fine sandstones with gypsum nodules. The overall stratigraphy is very similar to the expression of member TU and the Kilmer member in the NBCP cores we have seen at Stop 1-1.
A large collection of very well-preserved reptile footprints was made near here by Lawrence Blackbeer in the late 1960s (pers. comm., 1985; Olsen and Baird, 1986) (Fig. 32). Although the exact location was not recorded in detail, the lithology of the footprint slabs is consistent with the local expression of the Kilmer Member. This was confirmed by the discovery in 2002 of two well-preserved tracks during a field trip for IGCP 458 (Olsen, 2002) (by PEO and A.V. Hillebrandt, June 8, 2002) in appropriate lithology from between the two prominent copper-bearing sandstones at this spot (Fig. 32).
This Norian age assemblage is distinguished in the Newark Basin by the presence of relatively large grallatorid (theropod dinosaur) footprints, up to the size of Anchisauripus tuberosus; this is the oldest level in the basin with such tracks. Relatively large examples of the plausibly non-dinosaurian dinosauriform (silesaurid?) track, Atreipus milfordensis, are present, along with a the possibly dinosauriform or poposaurid track Evozoum sp. (“Coelurosaurichnus” sp. of Olsen and Flynn, 1989), as well as crocodile-line pseudosuchian track Brachychirotherium parvum, and the small lepidosaurian track Rhynchosauroides spp. This track assemblage records the beginning of the rise to ecological dominance of the dinosaurs, which in lower horizons are conspicuous by their relative rarity and small size. This assemblage is similar to that recovered from the Passaic Formation of Rockland County (see Stop 2-2).

STOP 1-7. ETE and E23r in uppermost Passaic Formation and Overlying Initial CAMP Basalt. Former Tilcon Quarry, Woodland Park, New Jersey 5
Leave vehicles and proceed to view the adjacent exposures. The following is modified from Olsen et al. (2004).
The “Four Seasons at Great Notch Spa and Club” (K. Hovnanian) “adult community” occupies the site of a quarry that produced a very large amount of important stratigraphic, sedimentological, and paleobiological information, especially during the last few years as construction proceeded for the development. The quarry was owned and run by a series of operators and is therefore known by various names, including: Little Ferry Asphalt, Union Building and Construction (UBC) Corporation, R.A. Hamilton, Dell Materials, and most recently Tilcon (the last operator). It has also been referred to as the “Clifton Quarry” and West Patterson Quarry (Gallahger & Hanczaryk, 2006).
The end Triassic extinction has left a rich, albeit asymmetrical, record in the northern Newark Basin. While most of the biological record below the ETE is from the southwestern Newark Basin, that above the initial ETE is from is northern part. Fortunately, the very short (∼10m, <20ka) interval of reverse magnetic polarity lies in close proximity under the ETE allowing correlation that is independent of biostratigraphy (although in agreement with it).
Two main localities have provided nearly all of the biotic data in the Northern Newark Basin, both of which are now-abandoned quarries incorporated into Montclair State University and the now-abandoned quarry (this stop). The Montclair State locality (40.868368°, -74.194389° and vicinity) produced a good collection of footprints in the 1970s into the early 1980s with some excellent examples being represented by actual specimens or latex molds ending up in the Princeton collection at Yale, Peabody Museum (New Haven, CT) or the Donald Baird mold collection, now with PEO (the latter badly in need of archiving). Overwhelmingly dominant are brontozoid tracks, including a full size range from Grallator to Eubrontes giganteus. Batrachopus cf. deweyii is the only other form recognized. The Woodland Park quarry site, described by Olsen at al. (2004) and Gallagher & Hanczaryk (2006), produced large numbers of a full size range brontozoid dinosaur tracks including Eubrontes giganteus, several with unique preservation styles, abundant Batrachopus deweyii tracks, and the lizard-like track, Rhynchosauroides sp. Possibly thousands of tracks from this site have been examined by amateur collectors, with many finding their way into museum collections, notably the Princeton collection at Yale, the New Jersey State Museum (Trenton, NJ), and the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ). Despite the very large numbers of tracks this site has produced there have been no examples of any other footprint taxa, nor any typical Triassic forms, some of which have been found nearby in lower strata (e.g., Baird, 1986) in Essex County.
As it was in 2011, when Tilcon was winding down its activity, the quarry exposes about 50 m of uppermost Passaic Formation and most of the 55 m thick lowest of three major flows of the 150 m thick Orange Mountain Basalt (Figs. 33 and 34). In this area, the uppermost Passaic Formation consists of two units of strongly contrasting facies: a lower interval of fluvial facies, and an upper unit of marginal lacustrine facies. The bulk of the upper Passaic in this region consists of upward fining cycles of relatively poorly sorted pale red conglomerate and pebbly sandstone with poorly defined trough cross bedding grading upward into massive red mudstones and sandstones (described by Parker et al., 1988). The units are intensely bioturbated, which is what obscures the bedding. This facies is overlain by red and gray mudstones and sandstones with more distinct bedding and excellent preservation of small-scale sedimentary structures, which are more heterogeneous than underlying units. There are cross-laminated sandstones with channel morphologies, tilted thin beds that toe laterally into mudstones suggestive of small deltas or crevasse splays, tabular beds of climbing ripple cross-lamination, and thin bedded mudstone beds suggestive of suspension deposits in standing water. Many sandstone beds are bound by clay drapes, and many surfaces are covered by ripples, desiccation cracks, and trace fossils, notably reptile footprints. The uppermost surface of this interval is covered by the Orange Mountain basalt and locally seems to have preserved some depositional relief, including small channels (Fig. 33). Vertebrate footprint assemblages (Fig. 35) and floral remains from the upper facies completely lack all Triassic forms, indicating that the interval postdates the ETE.
The thin reverse polarity interval E23r was identified in the north Quarry wall at about 16 m below the Orange Mountain Basalt in the coarser, fluvial, conglomeritic facies (Fig. 34) that is similar to normal Passaic formation in this area (Parker et al., 1988).
The coring transect of the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) Passaic River Diversionary Tunnel Project passed through this area, and a series of short cores (<200 m) were recovered through the uppermost Passaic and lower Orange Mountain Basalt (Fedosh and Smoot, 1988; Tollo & Gottfried, 1992; Olsen et al, 1996a; Olsen et al., 2002). All of them show the same facies transition as seen at this stop. Reverse polarity zone E23r has been identified in these cores at the appropriate levels as well (e.g., ACE core PT-38: Stop 1.1).
The floral assemblage from discontinuous pods of gray mudstone and sandstone at this stop include abundant remains of Brachyphyllum, a cheirolepidiaceous conifer and less common fragments of the dipteridaceous fern Clathropteris meniscoides, a large variety of casts of stems and rhizoliths and poorly preserved pollen mostly of the genus Classopollis. This is a typical post-ETE assemblage very similar to that in the overlying Feltville Formation. The fern Clathropteris meniscoides is the source of the spores at the spore spike in the southwestern part of the Newark basin.
A quite remarkable feature of the assemblage from this site is that it records the appearance of the first truly large theropod dinosaurs, and increase in size (length) of over 20% that occurs at or just after the extinction level. A 20% increase in track length should scale to a doubling of mass, and thus this represents a very significant change in the top predators. As spelled out by Olsen et al. (2002), there are two obvious possible scenarios to explain the abrupt increase in size in theropod dinosaurs across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary in eastern North America (and globally). First, that the appearance of the much larger theropods represents a dispersal event from some unknown location, or second, that it represents an evolutionary event. Thus far, we favor the second, evolutionary hypothesis for the appearance of large theropods and suggest that the abrupt increase in size is most easily explained by a sudden evolutionary response of the theropod survivors (which may have been quite small) to ecological release, operating at time scales of thousands of years. We hypothesize a response similar to that inferred for reptiles on modern islands lacking competitors. This evolutionary response hypothesis could be falsified by the discovery of equivalently large theropod bones or diagnostic Eubrontes giganteus (emphasis on the ichnospecies is important) tracks in unquestionably pre-ETE Triassic strata. Thus far these are wanting, contrary to assertions of, for example, Thulborn (2003), Lucas et al. (2006), and Lucas & Tanner (2008). In any case, this track assemblage suggests that the dramatic drop in non-dinosaurian diversity was caused by an extrinsic environmental catastrophe such as the CAMP, and the resulting drop in competitive pressure was the trigger for the global spread of large theropods. Sauropodomorph dinosaurs also survived the ETE, joining theropod and ornithischian dinosaurs to establish the familiar dinosaurian-dominated ecological pattern that dominated the terrestrial world for the next 135 million years.
The Orange Mountain basalt overlies the Passaic Formation and is a high-Ti quartz normative tholeiite (Puffer and Lechler, 1980; Tollo & Gottfried, 1992), a basalt type extremely widespread in the CAMP as the initial flow type. While it is the oldest flow sequence in the Newark Basin, slightly older flows (by thousands to tens of thousands of years), occur in Nova Scotia and Morocco (Blackburn et al., 2013). Based on the connection of the zircon-bearing Palisade intrusion to the Orange Mountain Basalt flows in Rockland County, the 238U-206Pb age of the basalt is 201.520±0.034 Ma and that of the ETE is 201.564±0.015 Ma based on the zircon ages and astrochronology (Blackburn et al., 2013).

Parking for stop 1-8

STOP 1-8. Upper Feltville Fm and lower Preakness Basalt Quarry
Leave vehicles at strip mall and walk about ∼145 yards (∼133 m) and enter woods down to creek). Proceed upstream ∼130 yards (∼ 119 m) observing outcrops of upper Feltville Formation to abandoned quarry in upper Feltville and basal Preakness Basalt. The following is modified from Olsen et al. (2003).
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 (Fig. 36). 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, conifer fragments, and wood. In terms of the cyclostratigraphy of the Feltville, this sequence is the interval of maximum precessional variability in the 100 ka cycle exhibiting the lowest precessional variability within its 405 ka cycle. The second flow of the Preakness has a 238U-206Pb age of 201.274±0.032 Ma, which is in complete agreement with its cyclostratigraphic age (Blackburn et al., 2013).
The basal flow of the Preakness as exposed here consists of a pillowed basalt complex and 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 near the border fault. It seems to be absent from at least West Orange (I-280) to near Somerville, NJ, but reappears along I-287 at Pluckemin, NJ. Olsen (1980a; 1980b) described outcrops of the lower flow but did not differentiate it from the overlying flow P-2 of Tollo & Gottfried (1992). At this locality there is little metamorphic effect on the underlying Feltville Formation, which is 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), 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 one of the largest lava flows known on Earth.
In terms of environmental effects, rate as well as magnitude matters, and the eruption of this flow, if it was indeed one eruption, would have been among the largest flows known on Earth in terms of volume, and would have had significant global 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 its 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. The well-developed, platy-prismatic fracture in Flow P-2 is very well displayed here and could be very significant for sequestration. As previously discussed, Goldberg et al. (2009) argue that carbonation reaction in permeable zones of basalt could provide a significant locus for carbon sequestration. However, while there is a large amount of porosity and permeability obvious here, it has yet to be demonstrated that it exists at depth in these ancient basalts.