Book Description

The Paxton Schist of Perry and Emerson (1903), referred to as the "Paxton Quartz Schist" by Emerson (1917), consists of medium-gray, thin- to medium-bedded, fine to coarse-grained schistose granulite, which weathers the same color or slightly darker with a brownish cast. It is pre- Ordovician and probably late Proterozoic in age. The Paxton is herein elevated to group status. The Paxton as revised excludes strata now assigned to the overlying Brimfield Group (Peper and others, 1975). The lower, fine-grained part of the Paxton is herein named the Dudley Formation, and the upper, interbedded, fine to coarse-grained part is referred to as the Southbridge Formation (Pease, 1972). An excellent reference section for the Paxton is present along the north- east side of the Quinebaug River southeast of Southbridge, Mass. The approximate thickness of exposed mapped width of the Paxton is 4,700 meters (m), of which the Dudley forms 1 ,000 m and the Southbridge 3,700 m. The Paxton conformably overlies the Oakdale Formation and underlies the Brimfield Group in its type area in central Massachusetts. It forms a northeast-trending belt extending from east-central Connecticut into southern Maine and probably into the central Maine coast. It is correlative with the Hebron Formation in eastern Connecticut, the upper part of the Berwick Formation in southern Maine, and the Rye Formation on the New Hampshire coast. A slight coarsening of the unit toward the northwest suggests a source in that direction.