Proceedings of the Second U.S. Geological Survey workshop on the early Mesozoic basins of the Eastern United States
The Newark Supergroup includes the largely continental elastic rocks ("red bedsn) and interbedded basaltic flow rocks of Late Triassic and Early Jurassic age that crop out in discrete elongate basins parallel to the Appalachian orogen in eastern North America (fig. 1.1). The term "Newark Supergroup" was introduced by Van Houten (1977), referring to an unpublished manuscript by Olsen, to replace "Newark Group" (Redfield, 1856). a term that had been widely used but frequently misapplied in a time-stratigraphic sense (Klein, 1962). The use of the term "Newark Supergroup" preserves a well-established name (North American Stratigraphic Code, art. 7: c), which has increasingly been applied outside the U.S. Geological Survey to the rocks in all of the exposed basins (Geological Society of America, 1983). The Newark Supergroup is a formal assemblage of related group and formations (North American Stratigraphic Code, art. 29) with close lithologic and structural relationship that are implied through use of the supergroup designation. The term was clearly redefined by Olsen (1978) and was expanded to include subsurface red beds of early Mesozoic age beneath the Atlantic Coastal Plain and Continental Shelf. As these subsurface rocks are poorly understood and apparently of diverse age, lithol-