Humberside Geologist No.6

published 1988

The journal of the Hull Geological Society

Written Contribution by L.H. Emery

A WRITTEN CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCUSSION OF THE WOOD & SMITH PAPER. THE LITHOSTRATIGRAPHICAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE CHAIK IN NORTH YORKSHIRE, HUMBERSIDE, AND LINCOLNSHIRE. BY L. H. EMERY. Northern Chalk Symposium. 12th November 1977.

There is some evidence which suggests the existence of chalk belonging to a higher zone than is found on land in Yorkshire. The flint cast of an unfamiliar echinoid was shown to me early in 1977 by James Strachan a schoolboy, who had found it loose in Thornwick Bay, Flamborough the previous summer. Mr F. Whitham informed me that he had a similar specimen which he had collected as an erratic on the shore at Barmston some years earlier. I therefore made a plaster cast of each and sent them to Mr G. W. Wright, who identified them as Galerites abbreviatus (Desor) from the upper Belemnitella mucronata Zone (Upper Campanian) and the Belemnella lanceolata Zone (Maastrichtian). It seems possible therefore that exposures of chalk on the bed of the North Sea (belonging to the same depositional province as the Yorkshire chalk) include these higher beds, from which the North Sea icesheet transported the echinoids subsequently to become incorporated in the till overlying the chalk.

L. H. Emery.

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