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Early Pennsylvanian Paleotopography and Depositional Environments, Rock Island County, Illinois

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Early Pennsylvanian Paleotopography and Depositional Environments, Rock Island County, Illinois iS Guidebook 18 Early Pennsylvanian Paleotopography and Depositional Environments, Rock Island County, Illinois Richard L. Leary C. Brian Trask Nineteenth Annual Meeting, North-Central Section of the Geological Society of America Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Illinois, April 25-27, 1985 Sponsored by the Illinois State Geological Survey Early Pennsylvanian Paleotopography and Depositional Environments, Rock Island County, Illinois Richard L. Leary Illinois State Museum Springfield, Illinois 62706 C. Brian Trask Illinois State Geological Survey Champaign, Illinois 61820 ISGS Guidebook 18 Illinois State Geological Survey Morris W. Leighton, Chief Natural Resources Building 615 East Peabody Drive Champaign, Illinois 61820 1985 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/earlypennsylvani18lear WARNING: ACCESS TO THESE QUARRIES IS RESTRICTED!! Persons entering without permission are subject to arrest and fines! Primarily due to OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) federal regulations and insurance requirements, ALL persons entering property associated with quarries and mines MUST have WRITTEN PERMISSION and MUST WEAR hard hats, safety goggles, and steel-toed shoes and meet all other current federal safety regulations. WRITTEN permission MUST be obtained from the appropriate company PRIOR to entering the quarry property. Write well in advance of any planned visit to assure completion of necessary arrangements before the selected date. Write to: (Allied Stone Company quarry) (Collinson Stone Company quarry) Mr. James O. Ellis, President Mr. Richard DeShepper Moline Consumers 3115 23rd Avenue 313 16th Street Moline, IL 61265 Moline, IL 61265 1,1 «»*** EARLY PENNSYLVANIAN PALEOTOPOGRAPHY AND DEPOSITIONAL ENVIRONMENTS, ROCK ISLAND COUNTY, ILLINOIS INTRODUCTION The Geological Society of America, North- assemblage is distinct from the more com- Central Section, presents this one-day field monly preserved "coal-swamp flora." trip to Rock Island County, Illinois, where you The distinctive character of the flora has will have the opportunity to examine the pre- been considered the result of the distinctive Pennsylvanian unconformity, overlying sedi- environment that produced the flora. All flora ments, and an early Pennsylvanian upland from Rock Island County, and one from compression flora. The itinerary repeats a Brown County to the south, have been referred trip originally offered during the Ninth Inter- to as an "upland" flora. national Congress of Carboniferous Stratig- This field trip will give geologists and raphy and Geology (IX-ICC) in 1979. paleobotanists an opportunity to examine the In recent years the nature and significance stratigraphic and paleotopographic setting of of the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian boundary this flora. It will also provide an opportunity have received considerable attention. In Illi- to discuss the nature of the flora, its relation- nois, as in much of the continental United ship to the setting, and the paleoecological States, the boundary is marked by a major and evolutionary implications. unconformity. Extensive topographic relief The guidebook itself is a reprint of Leary developed on underlying strata prior to initial (1979). Some revisions have been made to up- Pennsylvanian deposition. In parts of Illinois, date the guidebook with new exposures, new especially along the margins of the Illinois data, and new references. The geology of the Basin, erosion removed great thicknesses of field-trip area has been discussed by Leary pre-Pennsylvanian rocks (although some forma- (1981). Additional information concerning tions may have been thinner than equivalent Labriscorpio alliedensis is also available (Leary, strata in the deep part of the basin, or in fact, 1980). Phillips and Peppers (1984) have sum- may never have been deposited). marized regional paleoenvironmental patterns In the Rock Island County area, the of coal swamps and discussed the effect of cli- Pennsylvanian System overlies rocks ranging mate on coal occurrence in Euramerican coal in age from Silurian to Devonian. Pre-Pennsyl- fields. vanian topography was characterized by deep Figure 6 has been revised to reflect new valleys, high hills, and some karst features. data. Now this illustration better shows the Although much of this topography can be pre-Pennsylvanian paleovalleys in the Rock examined only by means of drilling records, Island County area. Figure 7 shows the full some higher elevations are now exposed. extent of the channel exposed in the Allied Several of these features will be seen on this Stone Company quarry. It also indicates that field trip. most of the fossil-bearing strata have now been In recent years the senior author has col- removed by quarrying. Figure 8 has been lected a large number of well preserved early updated to show a current (1984) cross section Pennsylvanian plant fossils in the Rock Island of a channel. area. The fossils occur in rocks immediately Russel A. Peppers at the Illinois State overlying the erosional surface developed on Geological Survey has examined the spore Devonian carbonate strata (Cedar Valley and content of the coal from Stop 2. He believes Wapsipinicon Limestones: Middle Devonian (1984. personal communication) that this Series). The composition of the fossil plant coal is lower Westphalian A in age. Guidebooklet: Illinois State Museum No. 4 E Q Z < o u- z ? LU o > < -2-1 LU Q 2 u_ -1 Q u. Z i_ > LU O 2 r- > _l m O O LU Q CC q CO CO O < a. co < O co < O 3 Q CO < Z O LU > CC LU Q LU CC LU O. a o. z o 0- Q Q < 2 g u- S o > "- cc LU Z C3 H o LU LU §1 O cc 9z or < CO LU Q B? I UJ < o u § ueiuBAiAsuuaj UeiUOASQ ueunifs Figure 1. Geologic map of the Rock Island County area. Circled numbers are stops. Base map from Edmund and Anderson, 1967. < 1979 Leary: Pennsylvanian Flora, Rock Island County, Illinois u c '> o o -a p o C/3 9 o o •fi <u c (-1 0) +3 s CO 0) en d So 73 o> u rt c 9i oco i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 C G c 5 CO a a a a a a a CO CO 09 co CO CO CO CO •t— •fH CO cn cn CO co co co CO •^H s § 2 2 O s O ,* £ s S § Figure 2. Generalized sub-Pennsylvanian geologic map of Illinois. (From Plate 2, Paleotectonic investigations of the Pennsylvanian System in the United States, McKee and Crosby, Coordinators, U.S.G.S. Prof. Paper 853.) Guidebooklet: Illinois State Museum No. 4 Z to < >>c£> a; C75 a •"• cc CO e e < 3 C "C s-o; O a> C3 _ fi- Q § CO ns 3 u )H c ... S 'Ho "3 a. 3 GO .2 w J "o o C/J o> c k-H Oil re 01 CO O S OS tt a; a c ce _> o Oh o c >> o «i 3 C CD C C c o co CD - Oh > — C CO (xj >h c CD >> 3 0) u 2 o H c/1 C/> Oh Oh £ o < c 0) 35 Oh \ £ ° B3 i O >- Oh 1 i 1 u « iJ X 03 y H Q CO BACKGROUND Geological Background the Rock River north of Vandruff Island and the Allied quarry. This hill is about 10 m above the Stratigraphy. In the Illinois Basin, Penn- river level which is the approximate elevation sylvanian strata overlie rocks ranging in age of the major portion of the unconformity here. from Ordovician to Mississippian. The sub- This hill will be seen at Stop 2. Pennsylvanian strata are primarily carbonates Although extensive areas of relatively low and had been exposed to subaerial erosion. relief are present, some deep valleys were also Along the western margin of the Basin, Penn- developed prior to earliest Pennsylvanian sylvanian rocks overlie older Mississippian sedimentation. One such valley occurs in south- rocks in the central part and Devonian rocks eastern Rock Island County (see map, Fig. 6). in the northwest (Reinertsen et a/., 1974). A system of steep-sided, flat-bottomed Silurian and Ordovician strata underlie the channels was developed on Devonian limestone Pennsylvanian along the northern margin (see in the Rock Island County area. Although now geologic maps, Figs. 2, 3). largely destroyed by quarrying operations, these The relevant portion of the stratigraphic were observed in both the Allied Stone Company sequence in the Rock Island County area is quarry and the Cleveland quarry. The primary illustrated in Figure 4. The major unconformity trend of these channels was east-west (Fig. 7), between the Devonian Cedar Valley Limestone but the locations were apparently controlled by and basal Pennsylvanian indicates a long period jointing in the limestone. The exact nature of of erosion prior to earliest Pennsylvanian sedi- these channels has not been determined. mentation. Because strata as young as the St. These channels were 4 to 6 m deep and 8 Louis Limestone (Valmeyeran = basal Visean) to 20 m wide (Fig. 8). They were filled with occur beneath the unconformity to the south, shale, mudstone, and occasional lenses or thin, it is believed that the period of erosion came in discontinuous layers of sandstone. Occasional Late Mississippian/Early Pennsylvanian (at the thin layers and masses of pyrite are also present base of the European Namurian?). with a few pyritized plant axes. The shale and Pre-Pennsylvanian topography. Major valleys mudstone are almost exclusively gray except are known to have drained eastward and south- for the upper portion which is sometimes thinly eastward across the pre-Pennsylvanian surface laminated black shale. in the Illinois Basin (Smith, 1941; Horberg, Similar channels have been exposed in 1950). Similar valleys up to 140 m deep and up several other quarries in the Rock Island County to 32 km wide are known from other parts of area (Fig.
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