Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Trepostome bryozoans, burrow systems, and bedding features in an Upper Ordovician limestone from southeastern Minnesota

1 DSC_1322One of the little mysteries on the recent Minnesota research trip by Wooster students, faculty and staff is the origin of thin limestone beds in the middle of the thick shales of the Decorah Formation (Upper Ordovician). How did such accumulations of almost pure carbonate develop on such a muddy seafloor? Are they storm beds? Some sort of diagenetic feature? The records of brief sealevel changes? Brief interruptions in the supply of silicate sediments to the basin? Turbidites of carbonate material swept into a deeper basin? Above is a view of the top surface of such a limestone bed, this one found in the middle of the Decorah in a quarry near Rochester. The light-colored twiggy objects are broken colonies of trepostome bryozoans; the network of holes are burrows of a trace fossil called Chondrites.

3 Wangs carbonate bedAn outcrop view of one of these carbonate beds in the Decorah Formation, this one at Wangs Corner (N 44.41047°, W 92.98338°). These units are only a few centimeters thick, and have a variety of petrographic fabrics. This one appears to be an almost pure biosparite with Thalassinoides burrows penetrating from above carrying down a light brown sediment.

2 DSC_1325Back to our slab from the Decorah with a closer view of the trepostome bryozoans and round holes representing the trace fossil Chondrites.

3 DSC_1333Sawing a rock and then polishing a cut surface is always fun and profitable! This is a cross-section through the slab, oriented with the top upwards. A little bit of iron oxide diffused through the sediments provides the touches of red in the fabric of the limestone.

4 DSC_1341This closer view of the cut surface shows the exquisite bedding features, along with the bryozoans (B) and trace fossils (T) in cross-section. The burrows pass through the bedding and pie down into the rock a brownish sediment from above. These burrows were made by some sort of deposit-feeding organism that was mining the sediment for organic material. The bedded sediment may be slightly graded in grain size, meaning the many beds may consist of thin fining-upwards sequences. Note how the beds are contorted around the bryozoans as if they were dropped into the sediment while it was still accumulating.

This slab of bryozoans, trace fossils and contorted laminae looks to me like a storm bed formed quickly during and after the seafloor was significantly disturbed by currents. When conditions returned to normal some worm-like deposit-feeders in the fine sediment above sent their mining tunnels down deep into the carbonate looking for food. We have a hypothesis to test!

About Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is a Professor of Geology at The College of Wooster. He specializes in invertebrate paleontology, carbonate sedimentology, and stratigraphy. He also is an expert on pseudoscience, especially creationism.
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