Clay to silty clay at the base and sand at the top. Clay, massive to laminated, gray-brown, locally contains abundant diatoms and scattered small shell fragments. Sand, fine- to medium-grained, pale-gray to white, somewhat micaceous and woody with scattered shell fragments. Most Belleplain sand is quartz with lesser amounts of feldspar and mica. Pyrite is common in clayey strata. The Belleplain subcrops beneath surficial deposits where the overlying Cohansey Formation was eroded away. Along the Atlantic Ocean, the member is exposed on the southern sheet between Beach Haven Terrace, Ocean County, and Brigantine, Atlantic County, where the unit is overlain by thin to thick deposits of alluvium. The member is as much as 15 m (49 ft) thick. The basal contact with the underlying Wildwood Member is sharp and unconformable with a thin bed of reworked coarse-grained quartz sand at the base. A middle Miocene age for the Belleplain was determined from diatoms. Specifics of the diatom biostratigraphy are discussed in the Description of Subsurface Units. Shells from this unit had a strontium-isotope age estimate of 13.2 Ma (Sugarman and others, 1993).