Devonian Research Projects Underway
11/02/2007
Students Jackie Martin and Tom Schramm are currently conducting in-depth stratigraphic and paleontologic research projects through the Devonian Stratigraphy Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Bartholomew.
Jackie is investigating the array of biofacies preserved along a paleoslope in the Middle Devonian Stag Horn Point Coral Bed in west-central New York. She will be collecting samples from a single bed in the Hamilton Group to investigate which types of animals lived where on the sea floor approximately 385 million years ago. This data will be used to better understand the nature of fossil distributions as related to water depth in the Middle Devonian of the Appalachian Basin.
Tom is examining the Middle Devonian Dave Elliot Bed, a thin shell-rich horizon in the East Berne Member of the Mount Marion Formation exposed only in the Hudson Valley. This unit preserves some of the oldest members of the Hamilton Fauna, a suite of fossil organisms that thrived all across eastern North America for about 5 million years during the Middle Devonian (~385 myr. ago). Importantly, this bed has yielded the oldest known specimen of the common Middle Devonian brachiopod Tropidoleptus carinatus in the Appalachian Basin.
Tom collects samples from the Dave Elliot Bed at Earlton, New York, just west of Coxsackie.
Students Jackie Martin, Tom Schramm, and Caroline Rounds working in the Devonian Stratigraphy Lab processing samples collected in the field.
Recently discovered fossils from the Dave Elliot Bed of the East Berne Member in the Hudson Valley. A: the coral Favosites, B-E: the brachiopods Mediospirifer, Mucrospirifer, Tropidoleptus, and Athyris, F: a piece of fish bone.
