Devonian conglomerate crops out along the ridge top of the
east-facing Catskill front in North Lake State Park (near
Tannersville, NY).
Uplift from the Acadian Orogeny in the New England Region
resulted in the erosion and deposition of large quantities of
sediments into a fluctuating shallow sea that covered most of
eastern North America during Devonian time. The Catskills region
was proximal to the Acadian Highlands, and therefore received a
vast supply of sediments. (The boundary between the two geologic
regions is a line approximating the location of the modern Hudson
River; the Acadian Highlands was to the east. To the west was an
alluvial plain that grew and shrank with the rise and fall of sea
level.) Sediments of Devonian age accumulated as a sedimentary
wedge to as much as 10,000 feet in the Catskills region; these
sedimentary deposits are thickest in the east and grow
progressively thinner westward and southward. Massive
accumulations of conglomerate and sandstone exposed along the
eastern edge of the Catskills plateau led to an early
interpretation that the Catskills formed as a great delta-type
deposit, similar to the modern greater Mississippi Delta.
However, complexities in the sequence of the sedimentary
formations
throughout the greater Catskills have been revealed from more
recent
geological investigations. A new perspective of the Catskills
sedimentary sequence
is model of fluctuating shorelines and prograding alluvial
environments along the
western margin of the Acadian upland. Farther to the west massive
quanities of organic-rich mud accumulated in a deeper restricted
seaway basin. Today, these organic-rich deposits represent the
oil and gas shales that are abundant throught the Appalachian
basins and plateaus of the Ohio Valley region.
Today the Catskills are an erosionally-dissected plateau. Like the entire New England region it displays the effects of Pleistocene continental glaciation. The outcrop belt of Devonian rock in map below 2 roughly outlines the extent of Catskills. The southern extent of the Devonian outcrop belt is part of the folded strata along the Delaware River valley along the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border. Devonian sedimentary rocks also crop out closer to New York City in the Green Pond Outlier, a large syncline in northern New Jersey and southern New York containing middle and upper sedimentary Devonian rocks. Devonian sedimentary rocks are also preserved in a complex geologic area in northeastern Connecticut and extending northward into central Massachusetts.
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Phil Stoffer and Paula
Messina
CUNY, Earth & Environmental Science, Ph.D. Program
Hunter College, Department of Geography
Brooklyn College, Department of Geology
In cooperation with
Gateway National Recreational Area
U.S. National Park Service
Copyright May, 1996
(All rights reserved; use as an educational resource
encouraged.)>