Bethel Sandstone
Lithostratigraphy: Pope Megagroup >>West Baden Group >>Paint Creek Group >>Bethel Sandstone
Chronostratigraphy: Paleozoic Erathem >>Mississippian Subsystem >>Chesterian Series >>Gasperian Stage
Allostratigraphy: Kaskaskia 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)
Elwood Atherton, Charles Collinson, and Jerry A. Lineback
Name
Original description
Bethel Sandstone (Butts, 1917, p. 63-64).
Derivation
Named for Bethel School, 3.5 miles west of Marion, Crittenden County, Kentucky.
Other names
History/background
Type section
Type location
Type author(s)
Type status
Reference section
Reference location
Reference author(s)
Reference status
Stratigraphic relationships
Extent and thickness
The Bethel is 20-40 feet thick in much of its northwestern area (fig. M-35), but locally it is thinned by pre-Cypress erosion. The formation thickens to the southeast, reaching just over 100 feet in eastern Gallatin County.
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Lithology
The Bethel is dominantly sandstone in much of Illinois, but it grades to shale to the west. The sandstone of the Bethel is, in general, the coarsest grained of the Chesterian sandstones. Locally, it includes a few small quartz pebbles and a basal conglomerate of limestone and shale pebbles. Most of the sandstone is light gray to light greenish gray, but a few thin lenses are green or medium gray. Dark greenish gray shale partings are common, and some contain carbon and mica flakes. As the sandstone grades westward to shale, red and green shales become more noticeable. Along the outcrop belt in southwestern Illinois, a persistent bed of deep red, structureless clay about 15 feet thick is prominent.
Core(s)
Photograph(s)
Contacts
Well log characteristics
Fossils
In places, numerous fragmentary plant fossils, including Lepidodendron, are present.
Age and correlation
Environments of deposition
Economic importance
“Paint Creek” (in western Illinois) is an informal name applied to producing zones in the Bethel Sandstone.
Remarks
References
BUTTS, CHARLES, 1917, Descriptions and correlations of the Mississippian formations of western Kentucky, Part I of Mississippian formations of western Kentucky: Kentucky Geological Survey, v. 1, 119 p.
ISGS Codes
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