A new Independent Study project is born: The Soeginina Beds at Kübassaare

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Wooster student Richa Ekka now has her Independent Study project. This is a big moment for a Wooster student: choosing the iconic capstone experience to complete the curriculum. Geologists always have delightful choices — so many possible topics and so little time! Richa decided to study the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Soeginina Beds (lowermost Ludlow) at Kübassaare Cliff in the far east of the island (N 58.43259°, E 023.30978°) near the small village of Kübassaare. (This is the last site Olev showed us yesterday morning.) Jonah Novek and Richa are shown above carefully studying her outcrop. In Wooster geology tradition, all students on a field trip assist each other with the field work. Later this week Richa will be helping Jonah at his outcrops on Hiiumaa Island.

Richa’s goal is to thoroughly describe the rocks and fossils found at this exposure of the Soeginina Beds. She will make a paleoenvironmental interpretation, and then compare her results to those of Nick Fedorchuk (’12) who worked last year on the equivalent beds 70 km west during his Independent Study. There are some immediate clues to the general environment, such as the halite crystal mold pictured above. If halite crystals were forming, then at least part of the time there was hypersaline water about. The Soeginina Beds, though, also include various fossils, so the seawater chemistry could not have been hypersaline through all or even most of the depositional interval. This is where Richa’s bedding plane exposures give her a considerable advantage: she can detect features such as ripple marks, trace fossils, syneresis cracks and body fossils that could be easily missed in the two-dimensional cross-sections of cliff exposures.

The stromatolites, as shown above, are fantastic at Kübassaare Cliff. They are domical, most appearing to have grown as separate structures that blended laterally into single domes.

Some of the stromatolites have an odd banding, which you can see in the image above. It appears to be a color difference alone that is not reflected in the width of the laminae. One of many mysteries Richa will grapple with!

Above are some large recrystallized oval shells we found today in Richa’s section. They may be ostracods. If so, they are the largest I have ever seen. Ostracods would make sense in this very shallow environment, but so also would some bivalves.

Finally, we read in the scant literature on the Soeginina Beds that they have “eurypterid fragments”. We saw plenty of brownish flakes that could be bits of eurypterid chitin, but none had any identifiying features until Richa picked up one which clearly has the proximal segments and prosoma of a eurypterid. This is the first identifiable eurypterid I’ve ever seen in the field. Richa is proud and happy! (Even if I made her squint into the sun.)

Richa’s eurypterid. Maybe not museum quality, but far better than any I’ve ever collected! It is a good sign as Richa begins her latest intellectual adventure.

Google Earth location of Kübassaare Cliff on the eastern end of Saaremaa Island.