Rochester, Minnesota — We returned to Decorah, Iowa, today to measure and sample the Decorah Shale (Upper Ordovician) in its type locality. It was much drier here than on our last attempt! Above is the gray Decorah Shale topped by the brown Cummingsville Formation.
We started below the quarry exposure along the road to get the top of the Platteville Formation. This is the main locality for Dean Thomas (above) who is sampling these three units for conodonts and their associated carbonate petrographic facies. You may see tiny red ribbons on the outcrop that mark where we removed small blocks of limestone for lab analysis back in Wooster.
Here are some of Dean’s sampled strata in the Decorah. He also collected a few samples from the base of the overlying Cummingsville.
While Dean measured section and took samples, Etienne Fang (pictured), Rachel Wetzel and Nikki Bell worked through the Decorah Shale collecting fossils, with special concentration on the beautiful “gumdrop” bryozoan Prasopora.
It was a sunny day, so we took shade where we could find it!
At the end of the day we explored the richly-fossiliferous Cummingsville in blocks fallen from the face of the old quarry wall.
The Cummingsville is rich with both body fossils (brachiopods, crinoids, gastropods, bryozoans, especially) and trace fossils. A future Senior IS project?
Team Minnesota has now completed its fieldwork! From the left, Etienne Fang (Bethesda, Maryland), Nikki Bell (Santa Monica, California), Rachel Wetzel (Sewickley, Pennsylvania) and Dean Thomas (Montpelier, Virginia). These students did fine work, setting themselves up for several months of lab analyses back in Wooster. I’m proud of this group!
We still have a couple of days in Minnesota before the students fly to their homes and Nick Wiesenberg and I make the long drive back to Wooster with our samples and equipment. We plan to see the geological and historical sights within range of Rochester, which will, of course, be duly reported here.
