The Baltimore Canyon Trough, lying offshore from the United States Middle Atlantic States, contains a thickness of at least 14 km of marine and nonmarine sedimentary rocks. One deep offshore stratigraphic test (COST B-2 well), several wells on the coastal plain, 18 shallow core holes (Deep Sea Drilling Project, Atlantic Slope Project, and Atlantic Margin Coring Project) on the continental shelf and slope, and scattered oceanographic cores and dredgings provide rich foraminiferal assemblages from which the geologic age and depositional environments have been determined. The oldest sedimentary rocks penetrated are Upper Jurassic terrigenous sandstone and shale, which are interspersed with shallow-marine limestone. Lower Cretaceous rocks, where penetrated, are also chiefly terrigenous sandstone and shale, but Upper Cretaceous rocks are progressively more marine. Paleogene strata reflect even deeper marine conditions (bathyal carbonate deposits in the B-2 well). In the Neogene, terrigenous clastic deposits replaced the Paieogene carbonate sequences throughout the trough. Deposition began with thick (>800 m) deltaic beds in the Miocene and Pliocene and culminated in sandy and, in many places, nonfofesiHferous strata of the Pleistocene shelf. Surprisingly thick (>300 m) silty and sandy clay composes the Pleistocene section on the continental slope. These stratigraphic and paleoecologic relations are graphically illustrated in eight geologic cross sections parallel with and perpendicular to the axis of the trough.
