The Carboniferous in Massachusetts, US

Paleontology and geology

No Early Carboniferous (Mississippian) rocks are known from Massachusetts, as this was a time of uplift and erosion. Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) rocks occur over a large area of eastern Massachusetts, from the Rhode Island border, across the state to the Atlantic, south of Boston Harbor. These rocks are part of the same Narragansett Rift Basin that occurs in eastern Rhode Island, and consist mainly of siltstone, shale, greywacke, and conglomerate that have been highly folded and fractured, and somewhat metamorphosed. Fossils aren’t known from these rocks, but about forty species of plant fossils have been recovered from similar rocks in Rhode Island.