Little Bear Soil
Lithostratigraphy: Tuscaloosa Formation >>Little Bear Soil
Chronostratigraphy: Mesozoic Erathem >>Cretaceous System
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)
H. B. Willman and John C. Frye
Name
Original description
The Little Bear Soil (Mellen, 1937, p. 8-20), a soil locally preserved at the base of the Cretaceous System.
Derivation
Named for Little Bear Creek, Tishomingo County, Mississippi.
Other names
History/background
Type section
Type location
It is well exposed along the Post Creek Cutoff in Pulaski County (cen. 2, 15S-2E), where it is 7 feet thick, rests on the St. Louis Limestone, and is overlain by gravel of the Tuscaloosa Formation.
Type author(s)
Type status
Reference section
Reference location
Reference author(s)
Reference status
Stratigraphic relationships
The Little Bear Soil is included in the lower part of the Tuscaloosa Formation.
Extent and thickness
Isolated remnants have been found throughout the eastern part of the Mississippi Embayment.
Lithology
It is the only soil-stratigraphic unit that has been named in Illinois in pre-Quaternary strata (Pryor and Ross, 1962; Ross, 1963). It consists of remnants of an iron-rich residual soil developed on Paleozoic rocks. In Illinois it consists of red and brown clays with lenses and nodules of brown to black limonite and, generally, a few angular chert pebbles.
Core(s)
Photograph(s)
Contacts
Well log characteristics
Fossils
Age and correlation
The Little Bear Soil was developed during early Cretaceous time, after the erosional truncation of the Paleozoic rocks by the sub-Cretaceous unconformity.
Environments of deposition
Economic importance
Remarks
References
MELLEN, F. F., 1937, Little Bear residuum: Mississippi Geological Survey Bulletin 34, 36 p.
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.
ROSS, C. A., 1963, Structural framework of southernmost Illinois: Illinois State Geological Survey Circular 351, 27 p.
ISGS Codes
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