Lockport Group | |
---|---|
Stratigraphic range: Sheinwoodian-Homerian ~ | |
Type | Group |
Unit of | Cayugan Series |
Sub-units | |
Underlies | Vernon Formation |
Overlies | Clinton Group |
Lithology | |
Primary | Dolomite |
Other | Limestone, Chert |
Location | |
Region | New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia |
Country | United States, Canada |
Extent | Appalachian Basin, Michigan Basin |
The Lockport Group is a geologic group in the Appalachian Basin and Michigan Basin in the northeastern United States and Canada. This unit makes up the Niagara Escarpment. Its most famous feature is Niagara Falls. The unit outcrops in New York, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. [1]
The Lockport Group is made up of four formations. From base to top: Gasport Formation, Goat Island Formation, Eramosa Formation and Guelph Formation. The entire unit is composed of dolomite, with the exception of the Gasport which can be limestone, as well as occasional chert nodules. [2]
This section includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(July 2024) |
The Guelph Formation is at the top of the Lockport Group. It has been called the "Vernon Transition Zone" due to thin beds and laminations between carbonates, claystones and evaporates. Its base is delimited by a stromatolite bed.
Below the Guelph is the Eramosa Formation. This formation is typically a thinly laminated packstone and grainstone. There are stromatolite beds as well as corals preserved in this formation. Near the base the unit becomes vuggy. Again the top of this formation is marked by a sharp change between grainstone and a stromatolite bed.
The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States that starts from the south shore of Lake Ontario westward, circumscribes the top of the Great Lakes Basin running from New York through Ontario, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The escarpment is the cliff over which the Niagara River plunges at Niagara Falls, for which it is named.
Lockport is both a city and the town that surrounds it in Niagara County, New York, United States. The city is the Niagara county seat, with a population of 21,165 according to 2010 census figures, and an estimated population of 20,305 as of 2019.
The Onondaga Limestone is a group of hard limestones and dolomites of Devonian age that forms geographic features in some areas in which it outcrops; in others, especially its Southern Ontario portion, the formation can be less prominent as a local surface feature.
Niagara Gorge is an 11 km (6.8 mi) long canyon carved by the Niagara River along the Canada–United States border, between the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. It begins at the base of Niagara Falls and ends downriver at the edge of the geological formation known as the Niagara Escarpment near Queenston, Ontario, where the falls originated about 12,500 years ago. The position of the falls has receded upstream toward Lake Erie because of the falling waters' slow erosion of the riverbed's hard Lockport dolomite, combined with rapid erosion of the relatively soft layers beneath it. This erosion has created the gorge.
The Eramosa Karst is a provincially significant Earth Science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest in Ontario, Canada, located in Stoney Creek, a constituent community of the City of Hamilton, and immediately south of the Niagara Escarpment.
Eighteen Mile Creek, or Eighteenmile Creek, is a tributary of Lake Ontario located entirely in Niagara County, New York in the United States. The name of "Eighteen Mile" Creek refers not to the length of the creek, but to its distance from the Niagara River to the west.
The Clinton Group is a mapped unit of sedimentary rock found throughout eastern North America. The interval was first defined by the geologist Lardner Vanuxem, who derived the name from the village of Clinton in Oneida County, New York where several well exposed outcrops of these strata can be found. The Clinton Group and its lateral equivalents extend throughout much of the Appalachian Foreland Basin, a major structural and depositional province extending from New York to Alabama. The term has been employed in Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, though in many of these areas the same interval is referred to as the Rose Hill, Rockwood, or Red Mountain Formations. Historically the term "Clinton" has also been assigned to several lower Silurian stratigraphic units in Ohio and Kentucky which are now known to be significantly older than the Clinton Group as it was originally defined. Many parts of this succession are richly fossiliferous, making the Clinton Group an important record of marine life during the early Silurian. Several economically valuable rock-types are found within this interval, though it is perhaps best known as a significant source of iron ore
The Eramosa Member is a Silurian stratigraphic unit of the Lockport Formation exposed along the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario and western New York State. In the late nineteenth century it was an important source of building stone in Hamilton, Ancaster and Waterdown, and in the late twentieth century quarries in a similar unit, also called the Eramosa, near Wiarton in the Bruce Peninsula, became an important source of dimension stone at a time when most of the other resources of similar stone were depleted. Work in these quarries led to the discovery of exceptionally well preserved fossils. On the east Mountain at Hamilton, a well-developed cave system was discovered in the Eramosa and has now been designated as the Eramosa Karst Conservation Area.
The Debolt Formation is a stratigraphical unit of Meramecian age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.
The Cheltenham Badlands are in Caledon, Ontario, on the southeast side of Olde Base Line Road, between Creditview and Chinguacousy Roads. The site occupies an area of approximately 0.4 square kilometers and features exposed and highly eroded Queenston shale. The Cheltenham Badlands are a significant educational site due to the readily visible geologic processes and the red colour and the unique topography of the exposed shale make this a popular tourist site. The site is a Provincial Earth Sciences Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) since it is considered one of the best examples of "badlands topography" in Ontario.
The Redwall Limestone is an erosion-resistant, Mississippian age, cliff-forming geological formation that forms prominent, red-stained cliffs in the Grand Canyon. these cliffs range in height from 150 m (490 ft) to 244 m (801 ft). It is one of the most fossiliferous formations exposed in the Grand Canyon region.
The Neoproterozoic Chuar Group consists of 1,600 m (5,200 ft) of exceptionally well-preserved, unmetamorphosed sedimentary strata that is composed of about 85% mudrock. The Group is the approximate upper half of the Grand Canyon Supergroup, overlain by the thin, in comparison, Sixtymile Formation, the top member of the multi-membered Grand Canyon Supergroup. The outcrop of the Chuar Group strata is limited to exposures along the western bank of the Colorado River in a 150 km2 (58 sq mi) area of the eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona. The strata of the Chuar Group have been subdivided into the Galeros Formation (lower) and the Kwagunt Formation (upper) using the base of the prominent, thick sandstone unit.
The Bluefield Formation is a geologic formation in West Virginia. It preserves fossils dating back to the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous period. Sediments of this age formed along a large marine basin lying in the region of what is now the Appalachian Plateau. The Bluefield Formation is the lowest section of the primarily siliciclastic Mauch Chunk Group, underlying the Stony Gap Sandstone Member of the Hinton Formation and overlying the limestone-rich Greenbrier Group.
The Vernon Formation is a geologic formation in the Appalachian Basin. It is the lowest unit of the Salina Group. It is made up of red and green shales, siltstone, dolomite, anhydrite and halite. It is made up of three distinct units starting at the bottom (oldest) A, B and C units. These units correspond to units of the same name in its parent group the Salina.
The Gasport Formation is a geologic formation in the Appalachian Basin and Michigan Basin. This is one of the reef formations separating the Appalachian Basin from the Michigan Basin and the Ohio Basin. It is a part of the Lockport Group of carbonates. It is the lowest and oldest formation within the Lockport. The Gasport is found in Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Outcrops are limited to the area around the Great Lakes. It is part of a large reef structure dating back to the Silurian period. Being part of the Lockport Group it is a feature of the Niagara Escarpment.
The Mansfield Natural Gas Field is located west of Mansfield, Ohio, within the Appalachian foreland basin. The field is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long by 1.4 miles (2.3 km) wide and is in a general oval shape, stretching northward. This field, although small, is an analog for many of the natural gas fields that occur within the Appalachian Basin. It was first discovered by the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company in the early 1930s. It is part of the Utica – Lower Paleozoic system, which is estimated to make up 15 to 20 percent of the total hydrocarbon abundance of the Appalachian Basin.
The geology of Ontario is the study of rock formations in the most populated province in Canada- it is home to some of the oldest rock on Earth. The geology in Ontario consists of ancient Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock which sits under younger, sedimentary rocks and soils.
The Bertie Group or Bertie Limestone, also referred to as the Bertie Dolomite and the Bertie Formation, is an upper Silurian geologic group and Lagerstätte in southern Ontario, Canada, and western New York State, United States. Details of the type locality and of stratigraphic nomenclature for this unit as used by the U.S. Geological Survey are available on-line at the National Geologic Map Database. The formation comprises dolomites, limestones and shales and reaches a thickness of 495 feet (151 m) in the subsurface, while in outcrop the group can be 60 feet (18 m) thick.
The Salina Group or Salina Formation is a Late Silurian-age, Stratigraphic unit of sedimentary rock that is found in Northeastern and Midwestern North America. Named for its Halite beds, the phrase "Salina Group" was first used as a descriptive term by James D. Dana in 1863.
The Frenchman Mountain Dolostone is the uppermost and youngest of five Cambrian geologic formations that comprise the Tonto Group. It consists of beds of mottled white to gray dolomite often separated by thin seams of shale, especially in its lower part. In the Grand Canyon, this formation forms vertical cliffs that thicken westward between the top of the Muav Limestone and the base of either the Devonian Temple Butte Formation or Mississippian Redwall Limestone. Because of unidentified trace fossils and lack of datable body fossils, the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone exact age is uncertain. Within the Grand Canyon, its thickness varies between 61 and 137 m. West into the Lake Mead region, it thickens abbr=on and is 370 m (1,210 ft) thick at Frenchman Mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada.