Englishtown Formation

Englishtown Formation - Sand, quartz, fine- to coarsegrained, gravelly, massive, bioturbated, medium- to dark-gray; weathers light brown, yellow, or reddish brown, locally interbedded with thin to thick beds of dark clay. Abundant carbonaceous matter, with large lignitized logs occur locally, especially in clay strata. Feldspar, glauconite, and muscovite are minor sand constituents. Sand is extensively trough crossbedded particularly west of Mount Holly, Burlington County. In a few places in the western outcrop belt, trace fossils are abundant, typically the burrow Ophiomorpha nodosa. Unit is pyritic, especially in the carbonaceous-rich beds where pyrite is finely disseminated grains or pyritic masses as much as 0.6 m (2 ft) in diameter. Lowest part of unit is a massive sand that contains small to large, soft, light-gray siderite concretions. The Englishtown underlies a broad belt throughout the map area and ranges from about 45 m (148 ft) thick in the northern part of the central sheet to 30 m (98 ft) thick in the western part of the central sheet to 15 m (49 ft) in the southern sheet. Best exposures occur along Crosswicks Creek in the Allentown quadrangle and along Oldmans Creek. The basal contact with the underlying Woodbury Formation or Merchantville Formation is transitional over several meters. The age of the Englishtown in outcrop could not be determined directly but was inferred from stratigraphic position and pollen content. Wolfe (1976) designated the microflora of the unit as Zone CA4 and assigned it to the lower Campanian.