MAYSVILLE, KENTUCKY–Today I visited the University of Cincinnati for a meeting of Aaron House’s thesis committee, on which I serve. (Aaron is a 2004 geology graduate from The College of Wooster.) It all went very well and soon after Aaron took me and two other geologists on a short field trip to an Upper Ordovician outcrop near the Ohio River town of Maysville.
Outcrop of the upper Fairview Formation (Upper Ordovician) on Kentucky Route 11 near Maysville, Kentucky (N38.61243°, W83.75575°). A distant Aaron House for scale.
Many Wooster students and alumni will immediately recognize all the elements of a typical roadside outcrop of the Cincinnatian Group in winter: gray rocks matching the gray sky, the muddy ditch at the base, and the thin verge of grass extending to the road. Alternating limestones, siltstones and shales give the outcrop its jagged appearance.
Some of the best Ordovician fossils in the world are found in these sedimentary sequences, and the stratigraphy holds many mysteries despite over a century and a half of intensive study by geologists. Wooster students have completed dozens of Independent Study theses with these rocks, and there are many more to come. Aaron House is now pursuing a masters degree by assessing and interpreting the preservation of mollusk fossils in the Cincinnatian.
