Early Tertiary ages from the coastal belt of the Franciscan complex, northern California

Dinoflagellates and angiosperm pollen from the Coastal belt of the Franciscan complex and Yager Formation in northern California establish an early Tertiary age no older than Eocene for numerous localities between Cape Mendocino and Fort Bragg. Until recently, the Coastal belt of the Franciscan complex has been mapped as Cretaceous. Several species of Wetzeliella Eisenack, a distinctive dinoflagellate genus that ranges in age from Paleocene to Miocene but is characteristic of Eocene strata, are especially conspicuous in samples from many of these localities. A few samples from the same area have yielded assemblages of Cretaceous palynomorphs. Evidence of redeposition of a Jurassic dinoflagellate species into Lower Cretaceous, lower Tertiary, and Eocene sediments and of Cretaceous dinoflagellates into lower Tertiary sediments appears in several samples.