Stephen Crittenden 1

The whereabouts of the foraminifera described by Chapman (1894) from the Aptian

(Early Cretaceous) Lower Greensand Bargate Beds of Surrey (UK)..

STEPHEN CRITTENDEN.

The microfauna within the Late Aptian (nutfieldiensis Ammonite Biozone) Lower Greensand

Bargate Beds of southern England provides comparative material with offshore exploration

wells on the North West European Continental Shelf where the Aptian strata contain

hydrocarbon reservoir sandstones, both shallow marine (eg the West Netherlands Basin, the

Celtic Sea, offshore southern Ireland -Ballycotton and Kinsale Head gas fields) and deep

marine (eg. Agat, Blake, Britannia, Captain, Goldeneye and Hannay fields) in origin

(Crittenden et al., 1991, 1997, 1998, 1999; Brit Sauar pers. comm.).

The two editions of the Foraminiferal Stratigraphical Atlas illustrate the limited foraminiferal

data available for the Aptian succession onshore UK (Hart et al., 1981, 1989). Frederick

Chapman (1894) described the micropalaeontology of the Bargate Beds of Surrey, southern

England from quarry sections that have long been disused and in-filled and from exposures in

the banks of deep sunken lanes (a characteristic of the Weald area of southern England) since

degraded and in most cases ‘tarmaced’ over; a consequence of 20th Century urban sprawl. He

described taxonomically 139 species and varieties of foraminifera and 20 species and varieties

of ostracod but indicated no depository of the slide material. There is no depository for the

foraminifera indicated in the Ellis and Messina catalogue and the material was not deposited

in the Natural Museum, London (pers comm. Richard Hodgkinson and John Whittaker,

1981/2 & 1998: Museum Species Index, Museums Sample Catalogue and Donors Index).

The ostracod fauna described by Chapman (1894) had been found in the collections of the

Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge by Kaye (1964) who re-described and re-figured the species.

The foraminifera described by Chapman (1894) were found (summer, 2001) by Mike Dorling

(pers comm., and request by me : Collections Manager of the Sedgwick Museum) in the

Stephen Crittenden 2

collections of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge. There are 11 slides (catalogue numbers

557 to 567 inclusive) and the location within the slides of each of the foraminfera species

described by Chapman is recorded. In the Australian Geological Survey offices in Canberra a

catalogue entry for 14 slides of Aptian microfauna from the Bargate Beds (Littleton, Surrey)

formerly belonging to Frederick Chapman was discovered (John Laurie, Curator of the

Petroleum and Marine Division of the AGSO, pers. comm., and request by me: July, 1998 and

e-mail May, 1999) registered under the old ’Microfossil’ system as MF637 - MF650 inclusive.

Unfortunately, those slides and their contents were destroyed by fire on 10th April 1953. A

search by David J. Holloway, Senior Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology (pers comm. And

request by me: July, 1998), at the Museum of Victoria at Melbourne (Chapman’s employer

1902 - 1943) found no slides of Chapman’s material from the Bargate Beds.

A taxonomic revision of the diverse and relatively abundant shallow shelf marine

foraminiferal fauna recorded by Chapman, 1894 of Aptian age, is not the intention of this

note. Key index taxa include Chapman’s specimens of Bulimina polystropha which were

redesignated Verneuilina chapmani sp. nov. by ten Dam (1946, 1948) an important marker

species for the Late Aptian in the North Sea succession and Cristellaria (=Lenticulina)

tricarinella Reuss) considered (ten Dam, 1948) to be synonymous with Lenticulina

crepidularis (Roemer).

Initial observations suggest that P. antiqua Chapman (1894, pl. 32, figs. 12a, b, c) may be

assignable to the genus Trocholina while Truncatulina falcata Chapman (1894, pl. 34, figs.

15a, b, c; over 150 specimens) appears similar to the Gavelinella brielensis / intermedia

plexus described from the Aptian of the Paris Basin (Malapris-Bizouard, 1974) and the Isle of

Wight (Crittenden, 1982).

The seven specimens of planktonic foraminifera assigned by Chapman to two species -

Globigerina bulloides, d’Orbigny and Globigerina cretacea, d’Orbigny, 1840 (but not

illustrated) are important indicators of a fully marine environment. They may be comparable

Stephen Crittenden 3

with the planktonic foraminifera faunas from the Aptian strata of the North Sea (eg.

Crittenden, 1987; Banner & Desai, 1988; Banner, Copestake & White, 1993), the Early

Aptian Atherfield Clay of Surrey (as Hedbergella spp. by Hart & Carter, 1975) and the Isle of

Wight (Crittenden, 1982, 1983) and from the Lower Greensand of the southern UK (pers.

comm. Jaworski).

Acknowledgements

The initial research for this article was undertaken at Plymouth University, Devon in the early

1980’s during my Ph.D studies which were supervised by Prof. Malcolm B. Hart. I wish to

convey my sincere thanks to the scientists at the various institutions who at my request freely

gave their time to search for the Chapman slide collection.

References

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Globigerinina, with especial reference to the Aptian assemblages of Speeton (North

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Chapman, F., 1894. The Bargate Beds of Surrey and their microscopic contents. Quart. Journ.

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