Four rhyolitic tuff marker beds, Lower Pliocene, Wairarapa, New Zealand

Abstract
Spooner Tuff, Sedd el Bahr Tuff, Missing Tuff and Hikawera Tuff are very thin water-laid tephras that mark time planes in Opoitian (lower Pliocene) sediments in Wairarapa, New Zealand, and have been dated by paleomagnetic reversal stratigraphy at 2.82, 2.87, 2.97 and 3.29 Myr respectively. The tephras are the only marker beds in a thick section of marine mudstone, and reveal a simple geological structure that could not otherwise be determined.