67

Footprints of dinosaurs, first discovered by McLearn (1923), have
been later collected and described by Sternberg (1932). They occur
mostly in trackways on the surfaces of the thin-bedded siltstones and fine
sandstones or flagstones, but also on layers of clay ironstone. These foot-
prints have been found in Peace River Canyon from near Grant Flat
upstream to Ferro Point (See Figure 11). Both carnivorous and herbiverous
dinosaurs, including, possibly, horned dinosaurs, are represented. Sternberg
(1932) has referred them to six genera and eight species. No bones of these
reptiles have been discovered.

In the section of Dunlevy Creek, sandstone, shale, and thin coal seams
have been recorded by Williams and Bocock (1932). A section on Hasler
Creek in Pine Valley, about 550 feet thick and representing only a part of
the formation, has been described by Spivak (1944). It consists of shales,
siltstones, sandstones, and coal. The shales, in 6-inch to 16-foot beds,
comprise black, fissile types with concretionary bands or irregular nodules;
grey, black, hackly shale; brown weathering carbonaceous shale, with coal
seamlets; and arenaceous shale. ‘The siltstones, in 16-inch to 8-foot beds,
are dark grey, buff weathering and laminated and some have ironstone
concretions. Sandstones range from 4 inches to 18 feet thick, and are
magsive or thin bedded, and grey, cream, or bufi weathering; some are
micaceous and some are ripple-marked. The section also includes many
coal beds.

These beds of the Gething formation are mostly or entirely non-marine.
This is attested by the abundance of plant remains, absence of marine
fossils (so far as known), by many rootlets, by lack of boring mollusks in
the fossil wood, and by the tracks of land animals (McLearn, 1923). Many
kinds of subaerial, plain environment are recorded by the sediments, but
only a special study would permit their complete restoration. The fossil
stumps and tree trunks record forest growth, and the coal seams indicate
swamps of great extent. The thick, massive sandstones are probably the
result of great floods from the Cretaceous mountains. The ripple-marked,
thin-bedded siltstones and fine sandstones, with thin layers of shales,
accumulated in shallow ponds or in shallow, temporary flood-plain ‘lakes’.
The mud-cracks in the shale record stages when, in the dry seasons, the
ponds or ‘lakes’ dried up and left broad mud flats. It was across these
flats that the dinosaurs walked and left their trackways (McLearn, 1931A;
McLearn, in Sternberg, 1932). Brackish water or marine habitats have
not yet been recorded.

Table of Western Formations

In the Carbon Creek-Mount Bickford map-area, in the western part
of the Foothills between Pine River and Peace River Valleys, Mathews
(1947) has divided the Bullhead group into the following formations: