The Roadside Geology of Mississippi

Fossils I collected from Tueplo, Mississippi

Fossils in Mississippi

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RED BLUFF Mississippi (The Grand Canyon Mississippi) Full Hike

Red Bluff Canyons, Mississippi

A Few Days in Mississippi ...

The purpose of his endeavor is to figuratively visit Mississippi for a few days and engage in studying Geology and other Earth Science-related subjects by way of posts, videos, and links. 

In my past travels (including Spring 2021), I have crisscrossed Mississippi countless times, between Atlanta and El Paso; between Atlanta and Phoenix; and between Atlanta and Oklahoma; and visiting close college-era friends in the Gulfport area.  

Overnight motel and RV stays have included Vicksburg, Jackson, Pearl, Meridian, and Tupelo.  And while helping with 2006 church-related charity work in New Orleans eleven months after Hurricane Katrina, my friends in the Gulfport showed me some of the damage in that area.

But other than visits to Civil War sites in Vicksburg and Corinth, I haven't had much time for any rock-hounding and/or fossil-hunting in the state, except for a 2015 photographic and collecting stop (images below) in the Loess Deposits of Vicksburg (but no fossils).  Mississippi is another of those not sufficiently-visited, in-between places between home and further destinations.  

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

As with other subjects, as personal schedules don't allow for as much planning and writing as I would like, the choice of Mississippi (for a few days) was a spirit-of-the-moment thing.  But it does serve the purpose of giving me (and my wife) ideas for possible future van camping travels.

At the moment, I can think of no "Bucket List" items in Mississippi, perhaps because I don't know the state well enough. 

While working for the State Geological Survey, in order to understand the Middle Eocene of the southwest part of Georgia the Inner Coastal Plain, I learned a bit about the Middle Eocene Paleontology of the Jackson, MS area as well as fruitful localities, partially by way of Mississippi Geological Survey publications and by email correspondence with Dr. David Dockery III.  But that was 20+ years ago and I don't know about access to such localities and I am not as "mobile" as I was then.  

As Middle Eocene sedimentary units are not well-exposed in Georgia, except local members of the Lisbon Formation, Middle Eocene Echinoids are not as well represented as they are in Central Mississippi and Eastern South Carolina (Santee Formation).  While working on the STATEMAP Project (mid-1998 - mid-2000), I did find the tiny urchins Echinocyamis mcneili (Sp.?), but other small Echinoids were represented only by fragmented specimens in the Middle Eocene Lisbon Fm., Blue Bluff Member.

Otherwise, I have briefly collected Echinoids and Brachiopods from the Santee Fm. in a Saturday solo visit to a Martin Marietta quarry, near Cross, SC years ago.  But I have been able to do ZERO fossil collecting in Mississippi.  Whenever I was in Mississippi in the past, I was usually with my family, thus collecting trips were not feasible.  (Not complaining, "just sayin'".)

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Fossil Collecting At The Green River Formation

Fossil Safari, Kemmerer, Wyoming

Fossil Safari at Warfield Fossil Quarries, in Kemmerer, Wyoming is a pubic access site for Eocene Green River Formation fossils.  It is located in southeast Wyoming, not far East from Fossil Butte National Monument.  It is a fee-basis site and customers are allowed to keep all designated common fossil fish, while the Quarry reserves the right to retain all unusual fossils, which can include freshwater Stingrays, Turtles, Reptiles, Birds, Gars, Amia, freshwater Shrimp, Paddlefish, Crayfish, Mammals, "Aspiration" and "Eohiodons" (not sure what those last two are).

If I am able and circumstances permit, this is sort of a "Recovery" Bucket List item.  Thirty-plus years ago, while I still lived in El Paso, from a local rock shop, I purchased a cool slab of Green River Formation with 70+ fossil fish (probably the common "Knightia") for a good price of less than $100.  

I managed to hold onto it for perhaps 15 years or so after I moved back to Georgia.  Due to family-related expenses, I had to sell it to a traveling "rock shop" that was a regular at Atlanta-area rock and mineral shows.  I think I sold it for around $200, a decent profit though I hated to see it go.  (At least it probably made someone else happy.)  

The "Recovery" designation for this Bucket List item is because "I used to have one", had to sell it, and I would like to at least "replace" it with a smaller version maybe in hopes that one or both of my grandsons would be interested.  If I found several, I have two great-nieces that very much into science and nature things, as well.

Falls of the Ohio State Park Movie

Last August, Falls of Ohio State Park was briefly considered during the early part of our van camping "Northern Adventure".  But time and circumstances just didn't work out.

This seems to be a well-produced movie.  (Admittedly, I don't know enough about the local geology to hear any errors.)

[In the park, fossil collecting is strictly prohibited, at the risk of arrest.  If you do some advance preparation, there might be some nearby places where you can collect legally.]

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Falls of the Ohio State Park (Clarksville, Indiana)

Eocene Fossil Hunting at the Cement Quarry in Harleyville, South Carolina

Perhaps 20+ or so years ago, I visited one of the Eastern South Carolina quarries near Cross, South Carolina, where very fossiliferous Middle Eocene limestones are found.  (Not sure if this is the one or not.)

It was a Martin-Marietta quarry (at the time).  As I was by myself on a Saturday afternoon, "playing hooky" from a rock and mineral show in Augusta, GA.  [My first wife and I were having a bit of a "rough patch" and - as it was before cellphones were around - I'm sure I would have received some grief for going 120 miles further east beyond where I had been working for several days that week (south of Augusta)].  In other words, if something unfortunate had happened, she had no idea where I was.  

Because it was my first (and only visit, so far) to this quarry, I wasn't 100% sure of the local "ground rules".  As it was, I was well-satisfied to walk to sand/gravel roads of the quarry and pick up numerous Brachiopods and Echinoids from the Cross Member of the Santee Formation heaped alongside the roadways by periodic scrapings.  In this area, the lithologies were "moldic" limestone, soft, easily-disaggregated limestone, and "marl".   In this link, I think the old names "Cooper Marl" and "Duplin Marl" have been discarded, though I don't know what they have been "replaced" by.

Echinoid species that I found included "Protoscutella" and "Eurhodia" and one crab unidentified carapace.  

If I saw sharks' teeth, I picked them up, but my ultimate goal was the Echinoids, while the Brachiopods were the bonus finds.  As both of these taxa were the same light-gray color as the matrix, I had to "train my eyes" to see the smooth, curved surfaces of the fossils.

For the short amount of time that I had there, I would say it was one of my most productive solo field trips.  This was before the age of digital cameras and I have to admit that I haven't performed all of the necessary background work to ID and prepare the fossils for photography.  [Now this is on my middle-term "To Do" list.]

Ironically, years later one of the other dads associated with my son's Boy Scout Troop occasionally worked in that area and knew some of the quarry staff members.  We wanted to schedule our own field trip (probably an over-nighter), but we just couldn't make our schedules work together.  So it goes.

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How Was Squam Lake Formed? Intro

Please see yesterday's video about a part of Squam Lake's "Lentic" ecosystem.

According to another video, Squam Lake is New Hampshire's second-largest lake, with an area of 6800 acres.  As with most New Hampshire lakes, its genesis is considered to be due to Pleistocene Glacial Processes.

At approximately 3:45 in the video, a classroom exercise is done to offer insights as to the glacial processes responsible for Squam Lake. 

The Hubble Reef - Cohabitation Among the Waves of Squam Lake, NH

Back in the Summer of 1977, I spent a few days in the area of Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  At the time, one or two of my high school friends took the summer off from college to work at the Rockywold-Deephaven Camps resort.  (My 1974 Road Trip cohort Dave started there in 1976, I don't recall when the other one started.)  I made another short visit to the area in 1981.

While I was in the area, as my friends had to work during the day, I roamed around rockhounding, looking for old beer cans in the woods, and just exploring.  The Ruggles Pegmatite Mine, near Grafton, NH was approximately 38 miles to the southwest, and the Mount Mica Pegmatite mine, near South Paris, ME was about 80 miles to the northeast.  I was able to visit both on separate days.

The next video will be about how Squam Lake formed.