Marshalltown Formation

Marshalltown Formation - Sand, quartz and glauconite, fine- to medium-grained, silty and clayey, massive, dark-gray; weathers light brown or pale red, extensively bioturbated. Very glauconitic in basal few meters; glauconite concentration decreases upward so that in upper part of unit, quartz and glauconite are nearly equal. Feldspar, mica, pyrite, and phosphatic fragments are minor sand constituents. Locally, very micaceous (mostly green chlorite) with sparse carbonized wood fragments. Fine-grained pyrite abundant throughout formation. Local thin, pebbly zones with large fossil impressions occur in the middle of the formation. In the upper part of the formation, quartz increases to about 40 percent. Unit crops out in a narrow belt throughout the map area and forms isolated outliers in the central sheet. Best exposures are along Crosswicks Creek in the Allentown quadrangle. In the southern sheet, the Marshalltown underlies a narrow belt in the uplands and broadens to the southwest. Many Marshalltown exposures occur along Oldmans Creek and its tributaries near Auburn, Gloucester County. The contact with the underlying Englishtown Formation is sharp and unconformable. The basal few centimeters of the Marshalltown contain siderite concentrations, clay balls, and wood fragments reworked from the underlying Englishtown. Many burrows, some filled with glauconite, project downward into the Englishtown for about one meter (3 ft) giving a spotted appearance to the upper part of the Englishtown (Owens and others, 1970). The Marshalltown is the basal transgressive unit of a sedimentation cycle that includes the regressive deposits of the overlying Wenonah and Mount Laurel Formations resembling the overlying Red Bank Formation to Navesink Formation cycle in its asymmetry. Within the map area, only a few long-ranging megafossils occur in the Moorestown quadrangle (Richards, 1967). To the south, in the type area, Weller (1907) reported diverse molluskan assemblages indicating a Campanian age. More importantly, Olsson (1964) reported the late Campanian foraminifera Globotruncana calcarata Cushman from the upper part of the formation. No G. calcarata were found during our investigations. Wolfe (1976) assigned the pollen assemblage of the Marshalltown to the CA5A Zone considered to be Campanian. The Marshalltown has most recently been assigned to Zone CC 20-21 (Sugarman and others, 1995) of middle and late Campanian age (Perch-Nielsen, 1985).