Historical:Goreville Limestone Member

Lithostratigraphy: Pope Megagroup >>Kinkaid Limestone >>Goreville Limestone Member
Chronostratigraphy: Paleozoic Erathem >>Mississippian Subsystem >>Chesterian Series >>Elviran Stage
Allostratigraphy: Kaskaskia Sequence

Authors

Elwood Atherton, Charles Collinson, and Jerry A. Lineback

Name Origin

The Goreville Limestone Member of the Kinkaid Formation (Swann, 1963, p. 43-44), the uppermost member, is named for Goreville, Johnson County.

Type Section

The type section of the Goreville Limestone Member is in a quarry at Buncombe, 4 miles south of Goreville (SW SW SE 10, and NW NW NE 15, 12S-2E) (fig. M-1C), where the member is 40.5 feet thick.

Fig. M-1C -- Kinkaid Limestone showing clay-filled solution cavity in the Goreville Member at the top overlying a layer of shale with red bed (black) at the tope of the Cave Hill Member; in Southern Illinois Limestone Company quarry north of Buncombe, Johnson County.

Extent and Thickness

It is about 30 feet thick, but it ranges from about 25 feet in the north to nearly 50 feet in the south.

Description

The Goreville is a resistant and relatively uniform, massive limestone. Most of the limestone is brownish gray but some of it is light gray or gray. It is very fine grained but includes coarse fossil grains, mostly crinoidal fragments. It is cherty to slightly cherty nearly everywhere.

References

SWANN, D. H., 1963, Classification of Genevievian and Chesterian (Late Mississippian) rocks of Illinois: Illinois State Geological Survey Report of Investigations 216, 91 p.

ISGS Codes

Stratigraphic Code	Geo Unit Designation
4070	Mk-gv