Sloans Valley Member (Paragon Formation) of Kentucky:
Macrofauna
by Don Chesnut
(chesnut<at>uky.edu)
©DRC 2014
Introduction
The Mississippian-age Sloans Valley Member is generally a highly
fossiliferous shale found at the base of the Paragon Formation. It is
composed of interbedded calcareous shale and argillaceous limestone.
The member was informally named by Chesnut and Ettensohn
(1988)(and later formally named) for historically famous railroad
outcrops near Sloans Valley,
Pulaski County, Kentucky. The
Sloans Valley is found along the western belt of outcrop in eastern
and south-central Kentucky, but equivalent shale beds are found in
western Kentucky Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee where it is sometimes
called the upper Glen Dean Limestone. The Sloans Valley Member is
age equivalent to the Middle Chesterian Glen Deam Limestone of the
Mid-Continent region of the United
States and upper Viséan of Europe (Greb and
Chesnut, 2009).
More detailed information about the Sloans Valley Member can be found in Chesnut and Ettensohn (1988).
Macrofauna
Identified
macrofauna from the Sloans Valley Member include vertebrates, echinoderms,
mollusks, brachiopods, bryozoans, cnidarians, poriferans and arthropods. Most
abundant are the echinoderms, brachiopods and bryozoans. Wing-plates of the crinoid Pterotocrinus, and crowns of the crinoid Phanocrinus, the brachiopods Anthracospirifer, Cleiothyridina and Composita as well as fenestellid and ramose bryozoans are especially abundant. See the following categories for more information.