Hamilton Quarry is a

Late Carboniferous Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effe ...

lagerstätte A Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These for ...

near Hamilton,

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. 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 suggests it was once an estuary. This type of Lagerstätte is considered a ''Konservat-Lagerstätte'' (or ''conservation lagerstätte''), 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 may refer to: Legal, religious and social *Sin, a violation of God's Ten Commandments or other elements of God's moral law *Crime, legal transgression, usually created by a violation of social or economic boundary **In civil law ju ...

. 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 Brachiopods (), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of trochozoan animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, wh ...

echinoderms An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the ...

) fossils.

Paleobiota

According to thesis

Vertebrates

Arthropods

Mollusks

Other animals

Lycophytes and ferns

Seed ferns

Gymnosperms

Spores and Pollen

Fuslinids

{, class="wikitable sortable" style="background:white; width:100%;" ! colspan="4" align="center" , Fuslinids , - !Genus !Species !Notes !Images , - , '' Globivalvulina'' , Indeterminate ,

Fusulinid The Fusulinida is an extinct order within the Foraminifera in which the tests are traditionally considered to have been composed of microgranular calcite. Like all forams, they were single-celled organisms. In advanced forms the test wall was dif ...

in family Biseriamminidae. , , - , '' Dunbarinella'' , ''D. ervinensis'' , rowspan="2" , Fusulinid in family Schwagerinidae. , , - , '' Triticites'' , ''T. cullomensis'', ''T. plummeri'', ''T. ventricosus'' ,

References

External links

*Hamilton Quarry is managed by th
Johnston Geology Museum
at

Emporia State University Emporia State University (Emporia State or ESU) is a public university in Emporia, Kansas, United States. Established in March 1863 as the Kansas State Normal School, Emporia State is the third-oldest public university in the state of Kansas. Em ...

. *The ''Surficial Geology of the Hamilton Quarry Area'', Kansas Geological Survey (KGS
Open-file Report 2005-13
Carboniferous Kansas Carboniferous paleontological sites Geography of Greenwood County, Kansas Lagerstätten Paleontology in Kansas Paleozoic paleontological sites of North America Emporia State University