Lusk Shale Member

Lithostratigraphy: McCormick Group >>Caseyville Formation >>Lusk Shale Member
Chronostratigraphy: Paleozoic Erathem >>Pennsylvanian Subsystem >>Morrowan Series
Allostratigraphy: Absaroka Sequence

Primary source

Willman, H. B., Elwood Atherton, T. C. Buschbach, Charles Collinson, John C. Frye, M. E. Hopkins, Jerry A. Lineback, and Jack A. Simon, 1975, Handbook of Illinois Stratigraphy: Illinois State Geological Survey Bulletin 95, 261 p.

Contributing author(s)

M. E. Hopkins and J. A. Simon

Name

Original description

The Lusk Shale Member of the Caseyville Formation (Weller, 1940, p. 36).

Derivation

Named for Lusk Creek in Pope County.

Type section

Type location

The type section consists of exposures along the creek north of Waltersburg (12, 13S-6E).

Stratigraphic relationships

The Lusk Shale member is the basal unit of the Pennsylvanian System in southeastern Illinois.

Extent and thickness

The thickness of the Lusk varies from zero to over 200 feet.

Lithology

The member is composed of various amounts of silty shale, siltstone, and sandstone. Quartz pebbles are common to abundant in some sandstone units as much as 25 feet or more thick, and these units are similar to the Battery Rock and Pounds Sandstone Members. Other sandstone units as much as 50 feet thick are fine grained. The Lusk contains a few thin, unnamed, nonpersistent coal seams and a few zones with marine fossils, most of them fragmentary. In general, all the Pennsylvanian rocks in southern Illinois below the Battery Rock Sandstone are assigned to either the Lusk Shale or the Wayside Sandstone.

References

WELLER, J. M., 1940, Geology and oil possibilities of extreme southern Illinois: Illinois State Geological Survey Report of Investigations 71, 71 p.

ISGS Codes

Stratigraphic Code	Geo Unit Designation
3960	--