Vincentown Formation

Vincentown Formation - Sand, quartz, medium-grained, well- to poorly sorted, dusky-yellow to pale-gray; weathers orange brown or red brown, typically very glauconitic and clayey near base; glauconite decreases up section. Feldspar and mica are minor sand constituents. Unit best exposed in the Pemberton, New Egypt, and Mount Holly quadrangles of the central sheet where the overlying formations have been stripped away. The Vincentown Formation is as much as 30 m (98 ft) thick and averages 3 to 15 m (10-49 ft) in its subcrop belt. Where unweathered the unit is generally a shelly sand; where weathered the unit is largely a massive quartz sand. The unweathered sand of the Vincentown is exposed intermittently along the Manasquan River near Farmingdale, Monmouth County. The calcareous nature of the unweathered Vincentown was observed in several coreholes in the vicinity of Farmingdale. The contact with the underlying Hornerstown Formation is disconformable; locally shell beds (bioherms) up to 1.5 m (5 ft) thick are found along the contact. Shells in the bioherms are typical of a restricted environment and contain the brachiopod Oleneothyris harlani (Morton) in the lower beds and the oyster Pycnodonte dissimilaris in the upper beds. The basal contact and the Oleneothyris bioherms are exposed along Crosswicks and Lahaway Creeks and their tributaries. Where bioherms are absent, the basal contact is difficult to place within a sequence of glauconite beds. In general, glauconite beds of the Vincentown are darker gray than glauconite beds of the Hornerstown, and the Vincentown has more quartz sand. Upper beds of the Vincentown are as much as 12 m (39 ft) thick and are mostly silty, darkgray to green-gray, massive, glauconite sand that contains a small percentage of quartz. Calcarenite or coquina, characterized by an abundance of bryozoans, occurs locally along the western belt. These fossiliferous beds, 6 to 7.5 m (20-25 ft) thick, are best exposed along Shingle Run in the New Egypt quadrangle area and in streams that cross the Vincentown outcrop belt in the Pemberton quadrangle. Calcareous nannofossils, present in some Vincentown outcrops, are from Zones NP 5 (the Oleneothyris beds) and NP 9 (late Paleocene). Vincentown sediments are much more fossiliferous in the subsurface and contain Zones NP 5 through NP 9, inclusive. Therefore, the Vincentown corresponds in age with the Aquia Formation of Virginia and Maryland. Numerous studies of the foraminifera of the Vincentown from calcareous beds in the western outcrop belt indicate that the Vincentown includes the planktic foraminifera Zones P3b through P6a (Olsson and others, 1988). A potassium-argon age of 56.4 +/- 18 Ma was determined for basal beds near New Egypt, Ocean County (Owens and Sohl, 1973).