Edinburg Formation

Last updated
Edinburg Formation
Stratigraphic range: Late Ordovician
Edinburg Formation along C&O RR Staunton VA.jpg
Outcrop along tracks of the C&O Railway near Staunton
Type sedimentary
Sub-unitsBotetourt limestone member, St. Luke limestone member
Underlies Martinsburg Formation
Overlies Lincolnshire Formation
AreaVirginia
Thickness1200 feet [1]
Lithology
Primary limestone, shale
Location
Region Great Appalachian Valley
CountryFlag of the United States.svg  United States
Type section
Named for Edinburg, Virginia
Named byCooper & Cooper, 1946

The Edinburg Formation is an Ordovician-age geological formation in Virginia. It is primarily composed of basinal (deep sea) limestone and shale, and is one of the younger units in the "Middle Ordovician" sequence of the Shenandoah Valley. However, fossils have shown that it actually was deposited in the early part of the Late Ordovician. There are two major facies encompassed by the Edinburg Formation. The more abundant Liberty Hall facies consist of evenly bedded black limestone and shale. In a few areas, the Liberty Hall facies intertongue with the Lantz Mill facies. The Lantz Mill facies are grainy or cobbly wackestone which weathers to a buff brown color. Fossils are diverse, including graptolites, brachiopods, and trilobites. [2] [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edinburg, Virginia</span> Town in Virginia, United States

Edinburg is a town in Shenandoah County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,041 at the 2010 census.

The geology of Tennessee is as diverse as its landscapes. Politically, Tennessee is broken up into three Grand Divisions: East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Physically, Tennessee is also separated into three main types of landforms: river valley plain, highlands and basins, and mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martinsburg Formation</span> Geologic formation in the eastern United States

The Ordovician Martinsburg Formation (Om) is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. It is named for the town of Martinsburg, West Virginia for which it was first described. It is the dominant rock formation of the Great Appalachian Valley in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maquoketa Group</span>

The Maquoketa Group is an assemblage of several geologic formations. It is Upper Ordovician in age and named for the Maquoketa River in Iowa. It exists in Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. It is equivalent to the all but the basal formations of the Cincinnati Group in Ohio. Illinois and Indiana are the only states where the Maquoketa is considered a group. In other states it is a formation. The Maquoketa was deposited in a shallow intercontinental sea. Most of the clastic sediments are derived from the Appalachians, which were being raised at the end of the Ordovician. To a lesser degree some of the sediments were derived from the Ozark highlands to the southwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reedsville Formation</span> Rock formation in the USA

The Ordovician Reedsville Formation is a mapped surficial bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, that extends into the subsurface of Ohio. This rock is a slope-former adjacent to the prominent ridge-forming Bald Eagle sandstone unit in the Appalachian Mountains. It is often abbreviated Or on geologic maps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geology of West Virginia</span>

West Virginia's geologic history stretches back into the Precambrian, and includes several periods of mountain building and erosion. At times, much of what is now West Virginia was covered by swamps, marshlands, and shallow seas, accounting for the wide variety of sedimentary rocks found in the state, as well as its wealth of coal and natural gas deposits. West Virginia has had no active volcanism for hundreds of millions of years, and does not experience large earthquakes, although smaller tremors are associated with the Rome Trough, which passes through the western part of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcellus Formation</span> Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock

The Marcellus Formation or the Marcellus Shale is a Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock found in eastern North America. Named for a distinctive outcrop near the village of Marcellus, New York, in the United States, it extends throughout much of the Appalachian Basin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queenston Formation</span>

The Queenston Formation is a geological formation of Upper Ordovician age, which outcrops in Ontario, Canada and New York, United States. A typical outcrop of the formation is exposed at Bronte Creek just south of the Queen Elizabeth Way. The formation is a part of the Queenston Delta clastic wedge, formed as an erosional response to the Taconic Orogeny. Lithologically, the formation is dominated by red and grey shales with thin siltstone, limestone and sandstone interlayers. As materials, comprising the clastic wedge, become coarser in close proximity to the Taconic source rocks, siltstone and sandstone layers are predominant in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cathedral Formation</span>

The Cathedral Formation is a stratigraphic unit in the southern Canadian Rockies of Alberta and British Columbia, on the western edge of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It is a thick sequence of carbonate rocks of Middle Cambrian age. It was named for Cathedral Mountain in Yoho National Park by Charles Doolittle Walcott, the discoverer of the Burgess shale fossils.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lantz Mill</span> United States historic place

Lantz Mill, also known as Lantz Roller Mill, is a historic grist mill located at Lantz Mills, near the town of Edinburg in Shenandoah County, Virginia. It was rebuilt in 1865, after being destroyed by Union troops in 1864 during "The Burning", an American Civil War military action conducted by General Philip Sheridan in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. It is a 2 1/2-story frame building erected with post-and-beam construction. It sits on an eight foot high limestone foundation and has a steep standing seam metal gable roof. Four additions were made to the mill in the early 20th century. The mill foundation, mill race (contributing), and mill-dam were constructed some time before 1813. The mill closed in the late-1970s.

The Lexington Limestone is a prominent geologic formation that constitutes a large part of the late Ordovician bedrock of the inner Bluegrass region in Kentucky. Named after the city of Lexington, the geologic formation has heavily influenced both the surface topography and economy of the region.

The Oranda Formation is a geologic formation in Virginia. It preserves fossils dating back to the Ordovician period.

The Mount Whyte Formation is a stratigraphic unit that is present on the western edge of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in the southern Canadian Rockies and the adjacent southwestern Alberta plains. It was deposited during Middle Cambrian time and consists of shale interbedded with other siliciclastic rock types and limestones. It was named for Mount Whyte in Banff National Park by Charles Doolittle Walcott, the discoverer of the Burgess shale fossils, and it includes several genera of fossil trilobites.

The Waynesboro Formation is a limestone, dolomite, and sandstone geologic formation in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In some areas it is composed of limestone and dolomite. The Waynsboro Formation is one of the formations that make up the Shenandoah Valley. It dates back to the Cambrian period and is not considered fossiliferous.

The geology of Ohio formed beginning more than one billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is poorly understood except through deep boreholes and does not outcrop at the surface. The basement rock is divided between the Grenville Province and Superior Province. When the Grenville Province crust collided with Proto-North America, it launched the Grenville orogeny, a major mountain building event. The Grenville mountains eroded, filling in rift basins and Ohio was flooded and periodically exposed as dry land throughout the Paleozoic. In addition to marine carbonates such as limestone and dolomite, large deposits of shale and sandstone formed as subsequent mountain building events such as the Taconic orogeny and Acadian orogeny led to additional sediment deposition. Ohio transitioned to dryland conditions in the Pennsylvanian, forming large coal swamps and the region has been dryland ever since. Until the Pleistocene glaciations erased these features, the landscape was cut with deep stream valleys, which scoured away hundreds of meters of rock leaving little trace of geologic history in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.

The geology of Kentucky formed beginning more than one billion years ago, in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The oldest igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is part of the Grenville Province, a small continent that collided with the early North American continent. The beginning of the Paleozoic is poorly attested and the oldest rocks in Kentucky, outcropping at the surface, are from the Ordovician. Throughout the Paleozoic, shallow seas covered the area, depositing marine sedimentary rocks such as limestone, dolomite and shale, as well as large numbers of fossils. By the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian, massive coal swamps formed and generated the two large coal fields and the oil and gas which have played an important role in the state's economy. With interludes of terrestrial conditions, shallow marine conditions persisted throughout the Mesozoic and well into the Cenozoic. Unlike neighboring states, Kentucky was not significantly impacted by the Pleistocene glaciations. The state has extensive natural resources, including coal, oil and gas, sand, clay, fluorspar, limestone, dolomite and gravel. Kentucky is unique as the first state to be fully geologically mapped.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geology of Uzbekistan</span> Geology of Uzbekistan, an west Asian nation

The geology of Uzbekistan consists of two microcontinents and the remnants of oceanic crust, which fused together into a tectonically complex but resource rich land mass during the Paleozoic, before becoming draped in thick, primarily marine sedimentary units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eldon Formation</span> Geologic formation in Canada

The Eldon Formation is a stratigraphic unit that is present on the western edge of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in the southern Canadian Rockies of southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia. It is a thick sequence of massive, cliff-forming limestones and dolomites that was named for Eldon Switch on the Canadian Pacific Railway near Castle Mountain in Banff National Park by Charles Doolittle Walcott, who discovered the Burgess Shale fossils. The Eldon Formation was deposited during Middle Cambrian time, and it includes fossil stromatolites. The Eldon forms the scenic cliffs at the top of Castle Mountain, and can also be seen at Mount Yamnuska and other mountains in Banff and Yoho National Parks.

<i>Pterotheca attenuata</i> Ordovician fossil

Pterotheca attenuata is a fossil species from the Ordovician upper Midwestern United States. It has been variously classified as a monoplacophoran, bellerophont, or another type of gastropod.

The Lincolnshire Formation, often known as the Lincolnshire Limestone, is an Ordovician-age geological formation in the Appalachian region of the Eastern United States.

References

  1. Eugene K. Rader, 1967. Geology of Staunton, Churchville, Greenville, and Stuarts Draft quadrangles, Virginia . Virginia Division of Mineral Resources, Report of Investigations 12. Map Scale: 1:24,000.
  2. Read, J. Fred; Eriksson, Kenneth A. (2012). "Paleozoic Sedimentary Successions of the Virginia Valley & Ridge and Plateau" (PDF). Virginia Tech Scholarly Works, Department of Geosciences.
  3. Cooper, Byron N.; Cooper, G. Arthur (1946). "Lower Middle Ordovician Stratigraphy of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia". Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. 57: 35–114.