Cretaceous Synonyms

The latest Cretaceous is the Ripley formation, which lies west of the northern part of the last-named, and, about Scooba, in a small strip, the most southerly of the Cretaceous - it is composed of coarse sandstones, hard crystalline white limestones, clays, sands, phosphatic greensands, and darkcoloured, micaceous, glauconitic marls; its greatest thickness is about 280 ft.

Deposits of the Tertiary period form the basis of more than half the state, extending from the border of the Cretaceous westward nearly to the Yazoo Delta and the Mississippi Bottom, and southward to within a few miles of the Gulf coast.

The high land in the west of the island and the somewhat less elevated region in the east are formed of Upper Tithonian and Lower Cretaceous limestones, the latter containing Rudistes.

The greater part of western Asia, including the basin of the Obi, the drainage area of the Aral Sea, together with Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia and Arabia, was covered by the sea during the later stages of the Cretaceous period; but a considerable part 3f this region was probably dry land in Jurassic times.

Excepting in the extreme north, where marine Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils have been found, there is no evidence that this part of Siberia has been beneath the sea since the early part of the Palaeozoic era.