Introduction:

We are fortunate in Wooster to live so close to some of the most fossiliferous rocks in the world. The Cincinnatian Group of southeastern Indiana, southern Ohio and northern Kentucky contains an extraordinary abundance of well-preserved fossils representing hundreds of marine species which lived in a shallow sea about 450 million years ago. The outcrops (mostly roadcuts and small quarries) are easily accessible, and the fossils are so numerous that the rocks sometimes appear to be made only of them.

The Invertebrate Paleontology class at The College of Wooster is studying three units in the Richmondian Stage of the Cincinnatian Series (the Waynesville, Liberty and Whitewater "formations") in southeastern Indiana. Our goal is to continue work on a paleoecological reconstruction of the communities and environments present in this place and time. Our primary hypothesis is that we will still see an array of communities along an energy/depth gradient in these rocks, with the Waynesville deeper and the Whitewater shallower. We will test several other subsidiary hypotheses as the semester continues.

 Methods:

We spent a very wet September 10th on three outcrops in southeastern Indiana: Stop 1 was near the city of Richmond; Stop 2 about 22 miles south near the town of Liberty; and Stop 3 about another 5 miles down the highway. Detailed driving instructions, our schedule, field images, the stratigraphy, and lists of expected fossils can be seen on our itinerary page. The class was divided into three teams of four students, each team assigned to one of our stratigraphic units. At each stop one team was responsible for assembling a representative collection of fossils and rocks, with the other two teams helping. Back in Wooster each team is presently washing, sorting and labeling its collections. The team members will later divide into taxonomic specialities for identification and paleoecological analysis. Each student will photograph specimens for this website and make acetate peels where appropriate. This website will continue to grow with our work during the semester, with individual pages for each stratigraphic unit. During the last laboratory session of the course we will hold a conference to develop our paleoecological conclusions for these Cincinnatian rocks and fossils.

Web Resources:

Some websites to visit for information on our rocks and fossils are: the Keck Ohio pages (from a summer's project based in Wooster and ranging through northern Kentucky, southern Ohio and eastern Indiana); the Dry Dredgers page (maintained by an extraordinarily keen amateur group of collectors with professional standards and excellent eyes for Cincinnatian fossils); the Cincinnati Geology course page of Dr. Richard Davis (which has a comprehensive bibliography on Cincinnatian paleontology); and the excellent set of pages on the Ordovician of Kentucky maintained by the Kentucky Geological Survey.