2005_aug20_011

The color of the thick soil in this stretch of Big Brook is distinctive. It appears to be a good exposure of Red Bank formation, deposited in the late Cretaceous (last of the Mesozoic, or dinosaur, ages). NJfossils.net has a Geology Page devoted to Big Brook. It describes the (literally) Red Bank as "Cross-bedded orange to reddish-brown, micaceous, fine to medium feldspathic quartz sand and may contain large amounts of limonite/siderite. Generally unfossiliferous." More about the geology here, here, here and here.