Thus western Europe in early Carboniferous time was occupied by a series of constricted, gulf-like seas; and on account of the steady progress of intermittent warping movements of the crust, we find that the areas of clearer water, in which the limestone-building organisms could exist, were repeatedly able to spread, thus forming those thin limestones found interbedded with shale and sandstone which occur typically in the Yoredale district of Yorkshire and in the region to the north, and also in the culm deposits of central Europe.
In the district around Port Glasgow, on the south coast of the eastern peninsula, are the Boioro limestones, also of unknown age; they are lead-coloured, brecciated limestones with interbedded dolerites.
These Cretaceous limestones are interbedded with glauconitic greensands, as at Moeraki Point in eastern Otago.
The Eocene beds are nummulitic. There is a lacustrine group which has usually been placed in the Lower Eocene, but the discovery of Anthracotherium magnum in the interbedded lignites proves it to be Oligocene, in part at least.
The mountains consist here of an ancient laminated micaceous quartzite, which is in parts a flexible sandstone known as itacolumite, and in parts a conglomerate; it is interbedded with clay-slate, mica-schist, hornblende-schist and haematite-schist, and intersected by veins of quartz.