Paleontology in Louisiana refers to

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (geology), epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes t ...

research occurring within or conducted by people from the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. Outcrops of

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

-bearing

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...

s and

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

s within Louisiana are quite rare. In part, this is because Louisiana’s semi-humid climate results in the rapid weathering and erosion of any exposures and the growth of thick vegetation that conceal any fossil-bearing

strata In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as ei ...

. In addition,

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

alluvial sediments left behind by rivers like the Mississippi, Red, and Ouachita, as well as marsh deposits, cover about 55% of Louisiana and deeply bury local fossiliferous strata. Nevertheless, paleontologists and geologists have succeeded in reconstructing much of the state's prehistory. Around the beginning of the

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

, Louisiana was part of a landmass called

Rodinia Rodinia (from the Russian родина, ''rodina'', meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago. were probably ...

. This

supercontinent In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continent, continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", ...

began to break up into the northern

Laurentia Laurentia or the North American Craton is a large continental craton that forms the ancient geological core of North America. Many times in its past, Laurentia has been a separate continent, as it is now in the form of North America, although ...

and southern

Gondwana Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages ...

. This division split off local rock which would become part of the southern supercontinent. The

Iapetus Ocean The Iapetus Ocean (; ) was an ocean that existed in the late Neoproterozoic and early Paleozoic eras of the geologic timescale (between 600 and 400 million years ago). The Iapetus Ocean was situated in the southern hemisphere, between the paleoco ...

filled the region between these landmasses, submerging Louisiana. While fossils of this age have been found within the region encompassed by the state's modern borders, they originated elsewhere and were incorporated as clasts in much younger rock and are therefore not informative about the wildlife of

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

Louisiana. Louisiana remained completely underwater until the mid- Mississippian, when continental drift began to slowly reunite the northern and southern landmasses into

Pangaea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million y ...

. Pangaea itself began to break up early in the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

, separating

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

from the other continents and forming the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

. Louisiana's fossil record begins in the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

Epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided by ...

and documents the presence of

sharks Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorp ...

and marine invertebrates. After the Cretaceous ended and the Age of Mammals began Louisiana would see local sea levels rise and fall. During submersions Louisiana was home to a diverse marine invertebrate fauna and the early whale ''

Basilosaurus ''Basilosaurus'' (meaning "king lizard") is a genus of large, predatory, prehistoric archaeocete whale from the late Eocene, approximately 41.3 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). First described in 1834, it was the first archaeocete and prehistori ...

''. Fragments of leaves and petrified wood documented the contemporary local flora. Later in the

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

, Louisiana became a coastal plain wildlife inhabited by mammals like

camels A camel (from: la, camelus and grc-gre, κάμηλος (''kamēlos'') from Hebrew or Phoenician: גָמָל ''gāmāl''.) is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. C ...

and

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

megafauna like

mastodons A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...

. Local Native Americans were the first humans to try to make sense of Louisiana's fossils. For instance, they interpreted mastodon remains as belonging to an ancient monster called the grandfather of the buffalo. Such remains and the Natives'

mythological Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

interpretations had already caught the attention of scientists like

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier ...

by the mid-1700s, which highlights Louisiana's long history of paleontology. The state's most famous fossil site is exposed on the east bank of the

Red River of the South The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major river in the Southern United States. It was named for its reddish water color from passing through red-bed country in its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name ...

at Montgomery Landing.

Prehistory

Proterozoic-Jurassic (pre-local fossil record geologic history)

Positions of ancient continents, 550 million years ago

Geological research has revealed a long and complex geological history for the regional now occupied by Louisiana. During the Late

Proterozoic The Proterozoic () is a geological eon spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8million years ago. It is the most recent part of the Precambrian "supereon". It is also the longest eon of the Earth's geologic time scale, and it is subdivided ...

and Early

, the supercontinent of

was beginning to break up. This division created two landmasses, the northern Laurentia, consisting of the continental crust and overlying sedimentary cover of prehistoric North America and the southern Gondwana, which included

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. Much of the geology underlying the Louisiana area was detached from Laurentia in the process, and the Precordillaria terrane was shifted by plate tectonics until it collided with and attached to what is now

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. The gap between Laurentia and Gondwana, where most of modern Louisiana was situated, was filled by the

. The Iapetus continued to submerge Louisiana between Early Cambrian to Middle Mississippian times, eventually becoming a body of water known as the

Rheic Ocean The Rheic Ocean was an ocean which separated two major palaeocontinents, Gondwana and Laurussia (Laurentia- Baltica-Avalonia). One of the principal oceans of the Palaeozoic, its sutures today stretch from Mexico to Turkey and its closure result ...

. Oceanic crust, island arcs, and trenches that formed and sediments that accumulated during this period have largely been consumed by

subduction Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

. No local fossils are known from this time, although fossils of Devonian to Mississippian

brachiopod 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, w ...

crinoid Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...

mollusca Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the At ...

s and other invertebrates can be found in

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a prec ...

gravel Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally throughout the world as a result of sedimentary and erosive geologic processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gravel is classifi ...

found within the relatively recent

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Nashville Dome in the state of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

. Around this time, Laurentia and Gondwana began to reunite. During the collision between these continents, the remaining, small portion of oceanic crust and overlying sediment were shoved northward by Gondwana and incorporated into the

Ouachita Mountains The Ouachita Mountains (), simply referred to as the Ouachitas, are a mountain range in western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma. They are formed by a thick succession of highly deformed Paleozoic strata constituting the Ouachita Fold and Thru ...

within Arkansas and Oklahoma during the Late Mississippian to the Early Pennsylvanian times. During the Middle Pennsylvanian,

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleoz ...

, and

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

, the region of Louisiana consisted entirely of dry land underlain by Gondwana-derived crust as part of the newly formed supercontinent of

Pangea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million y ...

. During the

breakup of Pangea, the

opened by the separation of the North and South American plates. Initially during the Triassic through early

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

, tensional deformation created a series of basement

graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic contex ...

s and half grabens, which filled with terrestrial

red beds Red beds (or redbeds) are sedimentary rocks, typically consisting of sandstone, siltstone, and shale, that are predominantly red in color due to the presence of ferric oxides. Frequently, these red-colored sedimentary strata locally contain ...

and

volcanic rock Volcanic rock (often shortened to volcanics in scientific contexts) is a rock formed from lava erupted from a volcano. In other words, it differs from other igneous rock by being of volcanic origin. Like all rock types, the concept of volcanic r ...

s. During the Middle Jurassic

Bathonian In the geologic timescale the Bathonian is an age and stage of the Middle Jurassic. It lasted from approximately 168.3 Ma to around 166.1 Ma (million years ago). The Bathonian Age succeeds the Bajocian Age and precedes the Callovian Age. Strat ...

and

Callovian In the geologic timescale, the Callovian is an age and stage in the Middle Jurassic, lasting between 166.1 ± 4.0 Ma (million years ago) and 163.5 ± 4.0 Ma. It is the last stage of the Middle Jurassic, following the Bathonian and preceding the ...

ages the stretching of the crust between North and South America created a broad basin within the continental crust that opened initially to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

and later to the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. This Middle to Late Jurassic rifting that created the

Gulf of Mexico basin The formation of the Gulf of Mexico, an oceanic rift basin located between North America and the Yucatan Block, was preceded by the breakup of the Supercontinent Pangaea in the Late-Triassic, weakening the lithosphere. Rifting between the North ...

, the continental crust underlying Louisiana and adjacent areas was stretched and thinned forming the northern edge of Gulf of Mexico. Within the Gulf of Mexico basins, the widespread accumulation of thick Louann salt and other evaporate deposits occurred within a shallow, extremely salty Gulf of Mexico basin on top of thinned continental crust. By the end of the Early

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

, the combination of deposition and subsidence had created the modern morphology of the Gulf of Mexico basin. Exposures of rocks older than Upper Cretaceous are lacking within the borders of Louisiana so that is when the local fossil record began.

Cretaceous

Louisiana was covered by shallow seawater during the Cretaceous. This sea was inhabited by marine invertebrates and sharks, whose remains were preserved in Bienville Parish. The rocks containing Cretaceous fossils are exposed only in small areas lying directly over the Protho and Rayburn

salt dome A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when salt (or other evaporite minerals) intrudes into overlying rocks in a process known as diapirism. Salt domes can have unique surface and subsurface structures, and they can be discovered using ...

s in northwest Louisiana where they have been displaced from deep in the subsurface. Otherwise Cretaceous and older strata lie deeply buried beneath younger Cenozoic sediments where their fossils are inaccessible. In other words it is unknown whether dinosaurs lived in Louisiana.

Cenozoic

Since the beginning of the Cenozoic, the

shoreline A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...

of the Gulf of Mexico has shifted back and forth across Louisiana in response to sea level fluctuations, sediment accumulation, and tectonic subsidence. A great diversity of life flourished in the Paleogene seawater that periodically transgressed on the state. Invertebrates from these environments included bryozoans, corals, foraminifera, gastropods, ostracods, pelecypods, and more. During the

Late Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "daw ...

, the Montgomery Landing area was home to more than 50 different kinds of

mollusc Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

. Their remains would be preserved in a

glauconitic Glauconite is an iron potassium phyllosilicate (mica group) mineral of characteristic green color which is very friable and has very low weathering resistance. It crystallizes with a monoclinic geometry. Its name is derived from the Greek () me ...

marl Marl is an earthy material rich in carbonate minerals, clays, and silt. When hardened into rock, this becomes marlstone. It is formed in marine or freshwater environments, often through the activities of algae. Marl makes up the lower part o ...

deposit known formally as the Moodys Branch Marl. About 150 different species of marine invertebrate and vertebrate fossils were preserved in the Cane River Formation. The primitive whale

also made its home in the state and left behind fossils that would be preserved in the Yazoo clay. Many of the marine fossils from this period of the state's history were preserved in the Midway, Wilcox, Claiborne and Jackson groups. This stratigraphic interval documents the local terrestrial environments as well. Even in the Paleogene, Louisiana was home to rivers and deltas. Paleogene terrestrial deposits in Louisiana tend to lack fossils, so little information is available about what might have lived in these habitats. Nevertheless, poorly preserved

petrified wood Petrified wood, also known as petrified tree (from Ancient Greek meaning 'rock' or 'stone'; literally 'wood turned into stone'), is the name given to a special type of ''fossilized wood'', the fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation. ''P ...

and leaf fossils document the flora of this period in some places. Later, during the Oligocene, the marine life of Louisiana included corals, foraminifera, gastropods, ostracods, and pelecypods. These were preserved in what is now the Vicksburg Group. The presence of bodies of flowing water like rivers or streams is recorded in the terrestrial sediments of the Catahoula Formation. Fossils from this ancient environment are rare, but include petrified wood. During the Miocene epoch of the ensuing Neogene period west-central Louisiana held a coastal plain. The inhabitants of this environment were preserved in the sediments that became the Fleming Group. Research by

Judith Schiebout Dr. Judith Schiebout was an American paleontology, paleontologist, and was an Adjunct Associate Professor of Geology at Louisiana State University and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at LSU Museum of Natural Science.Anonymous (ndaDr. Judith A. ...

has recovered a rich fauna, including numerous taxa of fossil vertebrates, from

caliche Caliche () is a sedimentary rock, a hardened natural cement of calcium carbonate that binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or semiarid regions, ...

conglomerates from this unit. Within Louisiana, the Pliocene strata consist of highly weathered and oxidized fluvial sand and gravel. East of the Mississippi River Valley, these sediments are called the Citronelle Formation, while west of the Mississippi River Valley, they are known as the Willis Formation. These strata are actually younger than their preserved fossils, which are the remains of Paleozoic life from central Tennessee. The Tennessean fossils were preserved in chert, which was broken down into gravel and transported into the area by the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, ...

during the Neogene. By the late Pleistocene, the

Mississippi River Valley The Mississippi embayment is a physiographic feature in the south-central United States, part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. It is essentially a northward continuation of the fluvial sediments of the Mississippi River Delta to its conflu ...

had formed and much of the state was a coastal plain environment.

sediments cover roughly 20% of the surface of Louisiana largely in the southern part of the state. Nevertheless, fossils of this age are rare. Mollusks inhabited the state's brackish and marine waters. Terrestrial invertebrates included snails, who were preserved in the loess that blankets the uplands bordering either side of the Mississippi River Valley. More spectacular inhabitants of Pleistocene Louisiana included megafauna like camels and mastodons.

History

Native peoples of Louisiana interpreted local

mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...

fossils as the remains of monsters. They referred to the creatures as the grandfather of the buffalo. This subject was discussed in a 1748 letter from a French military officer named Fabri to

. In 1804, such large fossil bones were discovered on land belonging to the Opelousa people. In 1816, the state's famous fossil site at Montgomery Landing was discussed in writing. It was not until 2004 that any

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

fossils were reported from Louisiana. The first such find was a single tooth reworked out of

rocks and preserved in a

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

-aged fossil deposit near

Fort Polk Fort Polk is a United States Army installation located in Vernon Parish, Louisiana, about 10 miles (15 km) east of Leesville and 30 miles (50 km) north of DeRidder in Beauregard Parish. It was named to honor Leonidas Polk, the first ...

. The dinosaur it came from probably lived, died, and was initially buried to the north in Arkansas. Later, it was eroded from Cretaceous sediments enclosing it and an ancestral Sabine River transported it southward to where it was found. The bones of Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, sometimes are found during the excavation of loess for fill or the construction of roads or buildings.

Natural history museums

*Lafayette Natural History Museum & Planetarium,

Lafayette Lafayette or La Fayette may refer to: People * Lafayette (name), a list of people with the surname Lafayette or La Fayette or the given name Lafayette * House of La Fayette, a French noble family ** Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757� ...

Louisiana Museum of Natural History The Louisiana Museum of Natural History is the state's museum of natural history located on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. It houses the LSU Museum of Natural Science (the former Museum of Zoology, hence the collection c ...

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...

* Louisiana Art and Science Museum, Baton Rouge

Fossil sites

The most famous fossil sites within Louisiana are Creola Bluff at Montgomery Landing Site in

Grant Parish, Louisiana Grant Parish (french: Paroisse de Grant) is a List of parishes in Louisiana, parish located in the North Central portion of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, the population was 22,309. The par ...

and the Cane River Site,

Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana Natchitoches Parish (french: Paroisse des Natchitoches or ) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 39,566. The parish seat is Natchitoches. The parish was formed in 1805. The Natchito ...

. The Montgomery Landing Site was a long and high bluff that was the cutbank on the east side of the Red River. It exposed the top of the Cockfield Formation, the Moodys Branch Formation, and Tullos Member of the Yazoo Clay. In 1979, it was the site of a large whale skeleton discovery. The Moodys Branch Formation and Yazoo Clay were extremely fossiliferous with over a 100 species of invertebrate fossils and numerous species of vertebrate fossils, including one of the finest Eocene whale skulls known to science, having been found at this fossil site. Unfortunately, channelization of and construction along Red River has resulted in lower portions of the site being covered by sediment and the remaining exposures being completely covered by

colluvium Colluvium (also colluvial material or colluvial soil) is a general name for loose, unconsolidated sediments that have been deposited at the base of hillslopes by either rainwash, sheetwash, slow continuous downslope creep, or a variable combinatio ...

and overgrown by vegetation. As a result, fossils can no longer be found at this site. The Cane River Site is a low road-side cut made doing the construction of Interstate Highway 49 near

Natchitoches, Louisiana Natchitoches ( ; french: link=no, Les Natchitoches) is a small city and the parish seat of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. Established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis as part of French Louisiana, the community was named ...

. It exposes several feet of 44.5 to 46.5 Ma glauconitic silty clay belonging to the Cane River Formation. About 150 different species of marine invertebrate and vertebrate fossil have been found at this site. This site is slowly being destroyed by weathering and overgrown by vegetation.

Footnotes

References

* Anonymous, (nd)
''Louisiana, US''The Paleontology Portal
University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, California. Last accessed October 5, 2013. * Dockery, DT, III (1995) ''Rocks and fossils collected from Mississippi gravel.'' Mississippi Geology. 16(2):1–42. * Frey, RC, and RD Kaiser (1984) ''Surface exposures of Late Cretaceous strata at the Rayburns Dome, Bienville Parish, Louisiana.'' Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions. (34):357–361. * Galloway, WE (2008) ''Depositional evolution of the Gulf of Mexico sedimentary basin.'' in K.J. Hsu, ed., pp. 505–549, The Sedimentary Basins of the United States and Canada, Sedimentary Basins of the World. v. 5, Elsevier, The Netherlands. * Galloway, WE (2009) ''Pre-Holocene Geological Evolution of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Basin.'' in NA Buster and CW Holmes, eds., pp. 33– 52, Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota Vol. III, Geology. Texas A&M University Press, College Station, Texas. * Heinrich, P. V. (2001
''Louisiana Geofacts.''Public Information series
no. 6. Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 7 pp. * Heinrich, PV (2008
''Loess map of Louisiana.''Public Information Series.
no. 12,

Louisiana Geological Survey The Louisiana Geological Survey is a state geological survey established by the Louisiana legislature by Act 131 in 1934 to serve the citizens Louisiana by collecting, preserving, and disseminating impartial information on the geomorphology, hydrog ...

. * Louisiana Geological Survey staff (2008
''Generalized Geology of Louisiana.''Maps

, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. * Mayor, Adrienne. ''Fossil Legends of the First Americans''. Princeton University Press. 2005. . * Miall, AD (2008) ''The Southern Midcontinent, Permian Basin, and Ouachitas.'' in AD Miall, ed, pp. 297–327, The Sedimentary Basin of United States and Canada, Sedimentary Basins of the World, vol. 5, Elsiever, New York, New York. . * McCulloh, MP, and PV Heinrich (2002) ''Geology of the Fort Polk Region, Sabine, Natchitoches, and Vernon Parishes, Louisiana.'
Report of Investigation no. 02-01.
Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 82 pp. * * Salvador, A (1991a) ''Triassic-Jurassic.'' in A. Salvador, ed., pp. 131–180, The Geology of North America, Vol. J, The Gulf of Mexico Basin. Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado. * Salvador, A (1991b) ''Origin and development of the Gulf of Mexico basin. in A. Salvador, ed., pp. 389-444, The Geology of North America, Vol. J, The Gulf of Mexico Basin. Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.'' * Saucier, RT (1994) ''Geomorphology and Quaternary Geologic History of the Lower Mississippi Valley.'' U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experimental Station, Vicksburg, Mississippi. * Schiebout, JA (1994) ''Fossil vertebrates from the Castor Creek Member, Fleming Formation, western Louisiana.'' Gulf Coast Association Geological Societies Transactions. 44:675-680. * Schiebout, Judith A., Paul Heinrich, Dale Springer, and Judy Scotchmoor. July 1, 2005.
Louisiana, US

The Paleontology Portal
Accessed September 21, 2012. * Schiebout, J. A., Ting, S., Williams, M., Boardman, G., Gose, W., Wilhite, D. R., White, P. D., and Kilbourne, B. 2004. Paleofaunal & Environmental Research on Miocene Fossil Sites TVOR SE and TVOR S on Fort Polk, Louisiana, with Continued Survey, Collection, Processing, and Documentation of other Miocene localities. Louisiana. Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, Contract no. DACA63-00-D-006, Delivery Order no. 0015. Louisiana State University, 45 pp. * Schiebout, JA, and W van den Bold, eds. (1986) ''Montgomery Landing Site, Marine Eocene (Jackson) of Central Louisiana.'' Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 238 pp. * Stringer, GL (2002
''46-million-year-old marine fossils from the Cane River site, north-central Louisiana.''Public Information series
no. 10. Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 7 pp. * Stringer, GL, and M Henry (1996) ''First report of the Cretaceous Shark Squalicorax from Louisiana.'' Mississippi Geology. 17(2):40-42. * Thomas, WA (1991) ''The Appalachian-Ouachita rifted margin of southeastern North America.'' Geological Society of America Bulletin. 103(3):415–431. * Thomas, WA, and RA Astini (2003) ''Ordovician accretion of the Argentine Precordillera to Gondwana: A review.'' Journal of South American Earth Sciences. 16(1):67–79.

External links

* Anonymous (nda
''Louisiana Geological Survey Publications.''Louisiana Geological Survey
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. * Anonymous (ndb
''Geologic units in Louisiana''
United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. Last accessed September 5, 2013 * Anonymous (ndc
''US And Canadian Fossil Sites -- Data for LOUISIANA.''
Fossil Site. Last accessed October 5, 2013. * Anonymous (2012
Savory the Day
Last accessed October 5, 2013.
PDF Files of Louisiana Geological MapsGeneralized Geologic Map of Louisiana, 2008
PDF version
Generalized Geologic Map of Louisiana, 2008
jpg version.
Generalized Geology of Louisiana
(text to Generalized Geologic Map of Louisiana) {{Paleontology in the United States Natural history of Louisiana Science and technology in Louisiana