Delaware offers a few sites for fossil collectors, and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and the Pollack Farm are the best. Other locations throughout the state also offer good hunting grounds for fossil collectors. Just south of Dagsboro, where Route 113 crosses Pepper Creek, the collector can find young (less than 2 million year old) marine fossils from the Pleistocene Epoch. At the state sand and gravel pit just south of Middletown on Route 896, plant impressions from the Pleistocene may be found.
If you think you may have found a Delaware dinosaur or any unusual fossil, the scientists at the Delaware Geological Survey at the University of Delaware, Newark campus would like to see it. It could provide important information on the geologic history of the First State.
Rocks of Cretaceous age deposited in continental and marginal environments, and now found along the inner edge of the northern Atlantic Coastal Plain, have historically been classified as the Potomac Group and the Potomac, Patuxent, Arundel, Patapsco, Raritan, and Magothy formations. Subdivisions of the Raritan and Magothy formations have also been recognized. Lithologic characteristics and spatial relationships of the units indicate that only the Potomac Formation and the Magothy Formation can be differentiated in northern Delaware.
This Bulletin presents the subsurface stratigraphy of the post-Potomac Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of central Delaware, between the Chesapeake and Delaware (C & D) Canal and Dover. Geophysical log correlations supported by biostratigraphic and lithologic data from boreholes in Delaware and nearby New Jersey provide the basis for the report.
This study complements Delaware Geological Survey Bulletin No. 17 and deals exclusively with clays and clay-size minerals. The cored section at the location of Je32-04 has been subdivided into 25 clay zones on the basis of major changes in trends and degree of crystallinity of clay minerals. The composition of clay minerals varies from zone to zone. These clay minerals have been identified: kaolinite, berthierine, chlorite, illite, smectite, chlorite/smectite, illite/smectite, glauconite/smectite, and glauconite pellets.
A cored well 1,422 feet (433 meters) deep drilled two miles southeast of Dover is the basis for this integrated study of the lithology and paleontology of the Cretaceous-Tertiary section in central Delaware. The section is subdivided into lithostratigraphic, biostratigraphic, chronostratigraphic, and heavy mineral units. Data and results are presented on a common base in three plates.
The geology of Delaware includes parts of two geologic provinces: the Appalachian Piedmont Province and the Atlantic Coastal Plain Province. The Piedmont occurs in the hilly northernmost part of the state and is composed of crystalline metamorphic and igneous rocks. This chart summarizes the age and distribution of the geologic units that are recognized in the state by the Delaware Geological Survey.
In Delaware, the oldest unit of the Atlantic Coastal Plain is the Potomac Formation. Sediment eroded from the Appalachian Mountains was deposited in rivers and swamps in a tropical climate along the margins of the forming ocean during the latter part of Early Cretaceous time, about 120 million years ago.
The State of Delaware is located within two physiographic provinces, the Appalachian Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The Fall Zone divides these two provinces and essentially runs parallel to Delaware Rt. 2, Kirkwood Highway.
This guide contains illustrations of fossils from Delaware Geological Survey Bulletin No. 3 ("Marine Upper Cretaceous Formations of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal") and Report of Investigations No. 7 ("An Invertebrate Fauna from the Upper Cretaceous of Delaware"). The identifications have been revised to be as accurate as possible so that this guide will be useful to those fossil collectors interested in classifying their "finds."