NEW JERSEY BIRDS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

I previously stated that the Hornerstown and Navesink Fm., New 
Jersey, birds had been redated as Palaeocene. I said this because I 
have heard such in various talks given on the early Tertiary history 
of birds, and because Feduccia (1996) explicitly states it in his 
book. However, as evidenced by John Hutchinson in the following 
paragraph, this redating is clearly not correct and these New Jersey 
deposits ARE Cretaceous after all. John wrote...

> I've been to the quarry where the specimens are from.  There is an
> iridium anomaly above the bone bed.  All of the inverts and
> microfossils associated with the bone bed are Cretaceous. There are
> also Cretaceous sea turtles and mosasaurs from the quarry.  So 
> either there are Paleocene mosasaurs and other Cretaceous marine 
> taxa surviving into the Paleocene or there are Cretaceous modern 
> birds in New Jersey.

Note that the erroneous Palaeocene redating was not due to John's 
speculation that..

> The only reason Olson says they aren't is because he thinks that 
> there can't be modern birds in the Cretaceous and
> because the site has modern birds it can't be Cretaceous.

.. because Olson (and David Parris, 1987) did regard the Fm. as 
Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) when describing its avian assemblage.

Many thanks John for the new info., and thank the lord for mosasaurs 
and sea turtles. I hear a poster at this year's SVP meeting presented 
data on a Hornerstown mosasaur.

"Europe needs more badlands"
"A few nukes would do it"

DARREN NAISH
darren.naish@port.ac.uk