Cheesequake Formation

Cheesequake Formation - New unit named herein for outcrops in gullies at Cheesequake in the eastern part of the South Amboy 7.5-min quadrangle. Basal sand, quartz and glauconite, fine-grained, clayey, thin-bedded, dark-greenish-gray; middle part, quartz sand, very fine grained, thick-bedded, dark-gray, micaceous, and clayey silt with scattered and varying amounts of glauconite sand; upper part, quartz sand, fine-grained, clayey, thinbedded. Sand, excluding glauconite sand beds, is primarily quartz with small amounts of feldspar and mica. In most areas, particularly in the updip sections, the upper sand has been eroded away. This formation underlies most of the map area and is as much as 43 m (141 ft) thick. Nannofossils obtained from the Toms River and Freehold drillholes indicate that the Cheesequake Formation is latest Santonian at the base to earliest Campanian at the top (P.C. Valentine, oral commun., 1989) or equivalent to Zones CC16 to CC17. Thus the Santonian-Campanian boundary lies within the Cheesequake Formation. Studies of pollen (Litwin and others, 1993) in outcrop indicate a pollen assemblage containing elements of the ?Pseudoplicapollis cuneata-Semioculopollis verrucosa Zone (Vc of Christopher, 1982) and the CA2 Zone of Wolfe (1976).