Hamilton Quarry is a Late Carboniferous

Carboniferous

The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Devonian Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Permian Period, about 299.0 ± 0.8 Mya . The name is derived from the Latin word for coal, carbo. Carboniferous means "coal-bearing"...

 lagerstätte

Lagerstätte

A Lagerstätte is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossil richness or completeness.Palaeontologists distinguish two kinds....

 near Hamilton

Hamilton, Kansas

Hamilton is a city in Greenwood County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 268. The city was named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury.The city should not be confused with Hamilton County....

, Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It has a diverse assemblage of unusually well-preserved marine, euryhaline, freshwater, flying, and terrestrial fossils (invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants). This extraordinary mix of fossils has led to the interpretation of an estuarine environment. This type of Lagerstätte is considered a Konservat-Lagerstätten (or conservation lagerstätten), due to the quality the preservation of soft tissue (skin preservation).

The lagerstätte occurs within a paleovalley that was incised into the surrounding Carboniferous cyclothemic sequence during a time of low sea level, and was then filled in during a subsequent transgression

Transgression (geology)

A marine transgression is a geologic event during which sea level rises relative to the land and the shoreline moves toward higher ground, resulting in flooding. Transgressions can be caused either by the land sinking or the ocean basins filling with water...

. The channel has a capping series of interbedded laminated limestones and mudstones for which are designated the Lagerstätte beds or ‘vertebrate horizon’. This facies contains a well-preserved mixed assemblage of terrestrial (conifers, insects, myriapods, reptiles), freshwater (ostracods), aquatic (amphibians, reptile), brackish or euryhaline (ostracods, eurypterids, microconchids, fish), and marine (brachiopods, echinoderms) fossils.

External links

• Hamilton Quarry is managed by the Johnston Geology Museum at Emporia State University
  Emporia State University
  Emporia State University is a university in the city of Emporia in Lyon County, Kansas, just east of the Flint Hills.- History :...
  
  .
• The Surficial Geology of the Hamilton Quarry Area, Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) Open-file Report 2005-13.