Historical:Bailey Limestone
Lithostratigraphy: Hunton Limestone Megagroup >>Bailey Limestone
Chronostratigraphy: Paleozoic Erathem >>Devonian System >>Lower Devonian Series
Allostratigraphy: Tippecanoe Sequence
Authors
Charles Collinson and Elwood Atherton
Name Origin
The Bailey Limestone (Ulrich, in Buckley and Buehler, 1904, p. 110) is named for Bailey's Landing on the Mississippi River, Perry County, Missouri, a settlement long abandoned but thought to have been at or near the village of Grand Eddy.
Type Section
As the original type section of the Bailey Formation is not exposed, Croneis (1944) designated as a neotype the outcrops in the river bluffs at and north of Red Rock Landing, half a mile east of Grand Eddy (11, 35N-12E).
Other Names
The Bailey Limestone has been traced widely in subsurface and referred to as the "unnamed limestone" (Collinson et al., 1967a).
Extent and Thickness
The Bailey Limestone underlies much of the deep part of the Illinois Basin and it has a maximum thickness of as much as 500 feet. It is 200-300 feet thick in the Illinois outcrop area, which extends from the south line of Jackson County to Olive Branch, Alexander County. It is exposed in high cliffs in the Mississippi River bluffs, especially in the Pine Hills area in Union County about 5 miles southeast of Grand Tower, where about 400 feet of Bailey, Grassy Knob, and Backbone is exposed (fig. D-3B).
Stratigraphic Position
The Bailey is overlain conformably by the Grassy Knob Chert and in many localities is not readily differentiated from it (Weller et al., 1952; Pryor and Ross, 1962).
Description
The Bailey is dominantly gray to greenish gray, silty, cherty, thin-bedded, very hard limestone. Some beds are argillaceous. The chert is black to dark gray and occurs in bands of nodules and in beds, some of which are 1-2 feet thick. Beds of calcareous and silicified siltstone occur in places. In the northern area, bordering the Silurian reefs, the Bailey is less cherty and is greenish gray, argillaceous dolomite. An upper zone, 0-100 feet thick, is pure, white, coarsely crystalline, only slightly cherty limestone similar to the Backbone Limestone, from which it is separated by the Grassy Knob Chert.
Fossils
The sparse fauna of the Bailey includes Leptaena rhomboidalis, Dalmanites sp. (pygidia), several species of rhynchonellid brachiopods, crinoids, and conodonts. Most of the fauna occurs in the upper part. The presence of Scyphocrinus elegans low in the formation has been interpreted as indicating that the lower part is uppermost Silurian in age and that no break in sedimentation occurred between the Silurian and Devonian Systems in this region.
References
BUCKLEY, E. R., and H. A. BUEHLER, 1904, Quarrying industry in Missouri: Missouri Bureau of Geology and Mines, v. 2, 371 p.
COLLINSON, CHARLES, L. E. BECKER, G. W. JAMES, J. W. KOENIG, and D. H. SWANN, 1967a, Illinois Basin, in International symposium on the Devonian System: Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists, v. 1, p. 940-962; Illinois State Geological Survey Reprint 1968-G.
CRONEIS, C. G., 1944, Devonian of southeastern Missouri: Illinois State Geological Survey Bulletin 68, p. 103-131.
PRYOR, W. A., and C. A. ROSS, 1962, Geology of the Illinois parts of the Cairo, La Center, and Thebes Quadrangles: Illinois State Geological Survey Circular 332, 39 p.
WELLER, J. M., R. M. GROGAN, and F. E. TIPPIE, 1952, Geology of the fluorspar deposits of Illinois: Illinois State Geological Survey Bulletin 76, 147 p.
ISGS Codes
Stratigraphic Code | Geo Unit Designation |
---|---|