836 E. O. ULRICH- — CORRELATIONS OF CHESTER FORMATIONS 



the preceding discussion of the fauna tends to show, in the lower part 

 of the Paint Creek and the middle part of the Gasper. 



Unquestioned Paint Creek beds in the Union County section (Bed XI 

 of chart). — The 25 feet of shaly beds above the 5-foot sandstone evidently 

 are only Upper Paint Creek, providing the Paint Creek actually cor- 

 responds, as we all believe, to the middle and upper parts of the Gasper 

 limestone. In Kentucky, and especially in northern Alabama, the upper 

 10 to 30 feet of the Gasper often are shaly and in places include sand- 

 stone. Where this shaly upper member is developed, free fossils are 

 likely to be found in great abundance. Its fauna is characterized by 

 abundance and variety of axes of Archimedes, which now strongly sug- 

 gest Golconda species of this genus. It is marked also, and we say par- 

 ticularly, by a species of Chonetes, the 0. chesterensis of Weller. Species 

 of Pentremites and of crinoids also are found in this bed, but the former 

 are less abundant and not precisely of the same kinds as those found in 

 the lower half of the formation. 



Xow it seems to be a fact that in southern Illinois also the genus 

 Archimedes is plentifully represented in the shaly limestones that lie 

 between the thin sandstone in question and the base of the overlying 

 Cypress sandstone. Further, these screwlike bryozoan colonies are asso- 

 ciated there, as in the vicinity of Huntsville, Alabama, with Chonetes 

 chesterensis, a brachiopod shell that is everywhere found in, and in Illinois 

 and western Kentucky apparently confined to, the Paint Creek formation 

 and its correlates. When we add to this the fact that the upper shaly mem- 

 ber of the Gasper locally includes one or two thin sandstones in Kentucky 

 and Tennessee, it becomes highly probable that the 5-foot sandstone in 

 the Union County section is to be credited with no greater significance 

 than pertains to the similarly located thin sandstones in the Upper 

 Gasper. In other words, there is a strong basis for the belief that it is 

 merely a thin sandstone within the upper half of the Paint Creek for- 

 mation. The same sandstone apparently extends from Union County 

 into Johnson Count}', where, if really the same bed, it is exposed in the 

 lower part of the Cache River bluffs section at Indian Point, 6 miles 

 south of Vienna. However, this lower sandstone at Indian Point, which 

 according to Weller is wanting entirely two miles east of Indian Point, 

 may prove to be the Yankeetown, though hardly, and certainly not, the 

 Bethel if the oolitic and crystalline limestones which there lie beneath 

 it are of Lower Gasper age. The Yankeetown itself is likely to prove a 

 continuation of the Middle Gasper Sample sandstone by extension under 

 younger deposits in a roundabout way from west central Kentucky 

 through Indiana into Illinois. 



