FAIRBORN, OHIO–It’s field trip season at last for the Wooster Geologists. Several geology classes have now been out in Ohio, taking advantage of windows of spectacular weather. Today was one of those days for 25 students in the Sedimentology & Stratigraphy class. We returned to the Oakes Quarry Park exposures in southwestern Ohio (N 39.81472°, W 83.99471°). Three years ago here in April it was 37°F and raining. This year the conditions were perfect. We studied outcrops of the Brassfield Formation (Early Silurian, Llandovery) in the old quarry walls. The students measured stratigraphic columns of these fossiliferous biosparites as part of an exercise, and then explored the glacially-truncated top of the unit.
The Brassfield is intensely fossiliferous. Large portions of it are virtually made of crinoid fragments. In the random view above you can see columnals, as well as a few calyx plates. This is why this unit is very popular among my echinodermologist friends at Ohio State.
Kevin Komara, Brian Merritt and Dan Misinay (Team Football) are here contemplating the quarry wall, planning how to measure their sections.
One of our Teaching Assistants, Sarah Bender, is here pointing out one of the many thin intercalated clay units in the Brassfield biosparites.
Fellow Californian Michael Williams directed the action. No, actually he’s doing the time-honored technique of following a measured unit with his finger as he finds a place he can safely climb to it and the units above. He is holding one of our measuring tools, a Jacob’s Staff. Why do we call them “Jacob’s Staffs”? Read Genesis 30:25-43. (Yes, today’s students are mystified by Biblical references.)
Here’s Rachel Wetzel, giving me a heart attack. Don’t worry, insurance companies and parents, she’s fine.
Rachel is again on the left. Team Ultimate Frisbee (Meredith Mann and Mae Kemsley) are in the front, and Sharron Ostermann is above. This is the recommended way to get to the top of the exposure!
We carried our lunches in “to go” boxes from the dining hall. Our Teaching Assistants Sarah Bender and Kaitlin Starr enjoyed a sunny picnic on the rocks.
The top level of the quarry was cleared of soil and brush many years ago to expose a glacially truncated and polished surface of the Brassfield. Looking for glacial grooves and fossils here are (from the left) Tom Dickinson, Jeff Gunderson (another Californian!), Andrew Conaway, and Luke Kosowatz (who seems to also be making a little pile of rocks as a memorial to a great day).
One of the many corals we found in the top of the Brassfield was this halysitid (“chain coral”), an indicator fossil for the Late Ordovician and Silurian.
Everyone returned safely to Wooster with their completed stratigraphic columns, lithological descriptions, and a few fossils. Thank you to Mark Livengood, our bus driver. Good luck to the other field trip groups later this month!
