THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN KINDERHOOK 



FAUNAS 



STUART WELLER 

 The University of Chicago 



The name "Kinderhook," as applied to a series of Paleozoic 

 strata in the Mississippi Valley, was first used by Meek and Worthen 1 

 in 1861 for all those beds lying between the "Black Shale" below 

 and the Burlington Limestone above. The name of this series of 

 formations was taken from the village of Kinderhook, in Pike County, 

 Illinois, where a good exposure of beds of this age occurs in the Mis- 

 sissippi River bluffs. Another typical section, designated by the 

 authors of the name, included the beds exposed at Burlington, Iowa, 

 lying below the Burlington Limestone and extending downward to 

 beneath the river level. Besides these, the "Lithographic Limestone," 

 ""Vermicular Shales," and "Chouteau Limestone" in Missiouri, 

 as defined by Swallow and his assistants, were considered as the 

 equivalents of the Kinderhook beds of Illinois and Iowa, as was 

 also the so-called "Goniatite Limestone" of Rockford, Indiana. 



The typical exposure of the Kinderhook Group, from which it 

 lias received its name, "is at the point of the bluff, just above the 

 village of Kinderhook." The section at this place, as given by 

 Worthen 2 and confirmed by the writer, is as follows: 



5. Loess capping the bluff 20 feet 



4. Burlington limestone 



3. Thin-bedded, fine-grained limestone . . 



2. Thin-bedded sandstone and sandy shales . 



1. Argillaceous and sandy shales, partly hidden 



15 

 6 



36 



40 



In connection with his description of the section at this locality, 

 Worthen states that "the thin-bedded sandstones (bed No. 2) . . . . 

 abound in fossil shells, belonging to the genera Aviculopecten, Spirijer, 

 Orthis, and Productus, mostly identical with those from the grit 



1 American Journal of Science, Second Series, Vol. XXXII, p. 288. 



2 Geological Survey of Illinois, Vol. IV, p. 27. 



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