ABSTRACT

An analysis of the contributions made by nineteenth-century explorers to the recognition and understanding of the Cretaceous System in the Williston Basin serves both history and science — history insofar as it establishes the reliance which Canadian explorers placed on the findings of their American counterparts, science insofar as it explains the foundation of some important stratigraphical correlations and the origin of some widely used stratigraphical names.

The outstanding nineteenth-century contributions to knowledge of the Cretaceous System in the southern Williston Basin were those by F. B. Meek and F. V. Hayden in 1856 and subsequent years. Their work, however, was preceded by that of others of note, including S. G. Morton's study of 1834 which established the presence of Cretaceous rocks in the continental Western Interior. Substantial studies of the Cretaceous System in the northern Williston Basin were made by James Hector, geologist to the Palliser Expedition of 1857-60, and by H. Y. Hind and S. J. Dawson in the course of their Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. These investigations too were preceded by the observations of John Richardson who, as naturalist to the First Franklin Expedition, may have suspected the presence of Cretaceous rocks in what is now Saskatchewan as early as 1820. Hector and Hind relied heavily on the knowledge and published work of Meek and Hayden; they used the classical 'Nebraska section* as a guide to nomenclature and as a standard for the first international correlations of Cretaceous rocks within the Williston Basin. In 1875 and 1890 respectively, G. M. Dawson and J. B. Tyrrell followed suit when they began to establish the Cretaceous sequence exposed in the Manitoba Escarpment.

Some well-known names, such as Niobrara, Millwood, Odanah, and Pierre, which have survived into modern stratigraphical nomenclature, had their origins in these early investigations, and some stratigraphical sections, which the nineteenth-century explorers described and measured, remain as type or reference sections central to modern stratigraphical analysis.