Hamilton Quarry

Hamilton Quarry is a fossil Lagerstätte in Greenwood County, Kansas that yields a diverse assemblage of unusually well-preserved marine, euryhaline, freshwater, flying, and terrestrial fossils (invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants). This extraordinary mix of fossils has lead 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. 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, spirorbids, fish), and marine (brachiopods, echinoderms) fossils.

No other Lagerstätte in the world, with respect to the assortment of habitats, has this abundant diversity of flora and fauna as the Hamilton Quarry Lagerstätten. This makes Hamilton Quarry one of the greatest glimpses into the past of any single fossil locality, especially during the Late Pennsylvanian.

External link

• Hamilton Quarry is managed by the Johnston Geology Museum at Emporia State University.