- Usage in publication:
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- Gay Head Greensand
- Modifications:
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- Named
- Dominant lithology:
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- Sand
- AAPG geologic province:
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- Atlantic Coast basin
Summary:
The Gay Head Greensand is here named in Martha's Vineyard, MA. It is part of the Gay Head moraine, composed of thrust plates made up of remnants of Coastal Plain sediments which were stacked up during Pleistocene glaciation. It is also found in borings and excavations in Marshfield and Duxbury. It consists of greenish-gray to bluish-gray, thin, highly fossiliferous, silty, glauconitic sand with authigenic quartz pebbles, phosphate nodules, and glauconite nodules containing fossils of mollusks, fish, and crustaceans. Overlies granite bedrock; underlies the Devils Bridge Clay with erosional contact. Thickness is 0.3 to 3.5 m. Age is Miocene.
Source: GNU records (USGS DDS-6; Reston GNULEX).
For more information, please contact Nancy Stamm, Geologic Names Committee Secretary.
Asterisk (*) indicates published by U.S. Geological Survey authors.
"No current usage" (†) implies that a name has been abandoned or has fallen into disuse. Former usage and, if known, replacement name given in parentheses ( ).
Slash (/) indicates name conflicts with nomenclatural guidelines (CSN, 1933; ACSN, 1961, 1970; NACSN, 1983, 2005, 2021). May be explained within brackets ([ ]).