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Summary
Principal results of this study of the pre-Marmaton Desmoinesian beds in southeastern Kansas are summarized as follows:
- The completed study includes detailed description of the succession as it is developed in the outcrop area in Kansas, in addition to data on correlation of individual beds with their equivalents in adjacent areas. The classification employed is that recently developed for these strata by state geologists for the northern Midcontinent, and the nomenclature used is accordingly the same as that in adjacent areas.
- Numerous stratigraphic sections indicate that some of the lithologic subdivisions common to most of the formations described are represented in any given. formation by slightly differing facies, which may serve in large part to identify the succession. This is especially true with respect to the dark shale and impure limestone that commonly rest on coal beds.
- Among the results of this study is the identification of several underlimestones (limestones directly beneath the underclay of a coal bed). Limestone at this position is common in the Cabaniss subgroup in southeastern Kansas and in northern Oklahoma, where at least two become massive, typically marine limestones. Underlimestones seem to mark the position within a formation at which basinward introduction of additional beds may occur.
- Several coal horizons in the Warner sandstone-Neutral coal sequence in Kansas seemingly are northward equivalents of coal beds in Oklahoma.
- The Seville limestone, present in western Missouri, and as far north in Oklahoma as Chelsea, has been identified tentatively in only a single exposure in southeastern Kansas. The underlying Bluejacket coal is also absent in most of the outcrop area in Kansas.
- An unnamed coal horizon occurs between the Tebo and Scammon coal beds. Subsequent to discovery of this horizon in Kansas, a coal bed equivalent to it has been found in western Missouri.
- A coal bed (Robinson Branch) occurring between the Mineral and Fleming coals is present only locally in Kansas, as well as in Missouri.
- In eastern Labette County, and southward into Oklahoma, the Verdigris limestone and Bevier coal are separated by several feet of sandstone and shale, a relationship contrasting to that to the northeast in Kansas and western Missouri, where the underclay of the Bevier coal rests directly on the Verdigris limestone. The term Stice, formerly applied to coal in Labette County now recognized as Bevier, is abandoned.
- Southward from Labette County, the Bevier coal-Blackjack Creek limestone sequence thins markedly. At the latitude of Vinita, Oklahoma, sandy shale and clay only a few feet thick separate the Bevier coal from the Iron Post coal.
- The Breezy Hill limestone is typically marine in northern Oklahoma, and directly underlies black fissile shale associated with the Blackjack Creek limestone. In northern Oklahoma the Breezy Hill has in the past been identified as the Blackjack Creek limestone, and the underlying coal (Iron Post) has been called Mulky.
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Kansas Geological Survey, Geology
Placed on web May 25, 2009; originally published October 1956.
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