PROJECTIONS AND EVIDENCE OF PRE WISCONSIN GLACIATION ON THE NEW JERSEY COASTAL PLAIN

On the New Jersey Coastal Plain lowlands, from Perth Amboy down to Trenton, there are Pleistocene deposits originally interpreted as marine and later as mainly fluvial and partly marine.

After some field work and reviewing reports of the New Jersey Geological Survey, it was convincing that these deposits were neither marine nor mere fluvial glacial outwash, but due to actual glaciation over the area.

Some of these deposits have been reported as resembling the older glacial drifts and till in the mountainous part of the state, including striations, the same degree of decomposition erosion and even containing the same elements like deposits under the Wisconsin drift in a few areas. Numerous reported features and characteristics, when taken together, can be readily interpreted as glacial. Gravel trains, 4 to 6 feet (even larger) boulders and unsorted deposits occur repeatedly throughout. Erratics occur above their outcrops. Low ridges fitting the description of eskers. Slabs of soft shale transported many miles. Varve like deposits. Swamps. Deformation of strata. Undulating swell and sag topography with undrained depressions (some kettle like, some ponded) strongly resemble subdued pitted glacial outwash plains or moraine like topography. Uneroded tracts like these occur well below the deposition at higher elevations by supposedly aggrading rivers. In the Perth Amboy, Trenton trough there is a divide over which rivers from the north had to flow, and were (hypothetically) facilitated by land subsidence, creating a sound from Perth Amboy to Trenton.

By projecting the mapped band of older drifts eastward, paralleling the Wisconsin terminal moraine lobe, it would fit in generally where the Pleistocene deposits are located.

By adhering to fundamental principles of river versus glacial transportation of materials, instead of adhering to historical theories and hypotheses and coupled with the evidence of features and characteristics, it is concluded that there was pre-Wisconsin glaciation (one or more epochs) on the New Jersey coastal plain. This should clear up much heretofore unexplained, misunderstood and confusing features of these Pleistocene deposits.