The Cromer Forest Bed: Preglacial or Interglacial?

Abstract

Now that the detailed palæobotanical account of the interglacial deposits at Bobbitshole, Ipswich, by Dr. R. G. West¹, of the University Sub-department of Quaternary Research, Cambridge, has appeared we are better able to appreciate the magnitude of our debt to him and to their finder, Mr. H. E. P. Spencer, of the Ipswich Museum. Correlation of East Anglian and Continental late Pleistocene events has been thereby substantially aided, but in the concluding section of the paper a statement re-appears about the correlation of an older phase which is difficult to reconcile with our records of East Anglian stratigraphy. The statement is that, in the opinion of the well-known authority, Prof. P. Woldstedt², the palynology of the Cromer Forest Bed series shows that it “was formed in the oldest (Cromerian) interglacial period in East Anglia”. Dr. West has, apparently independently, reached the same conclusion. It therefore becomes desirable to direct attention to some of the geological difficulties that arise from this interpretation.