Marne Road roadcut
Two important Lower
Mississippian sandstone units in Ohio are exposed together along Marne Road in
eastern Licking County, Ohio. The massive, lower cliff-forming sandstone
unit in the photo below is the upper Black Hand Sandstone and thin-bedded
quartzose sandstones of the lower Logan Formation occur at the top of the
cut. Both are usually considered upper Kinderhookian (lower Lower
Mississippian), with the Kinderhookian-Osagean boundary occurring somewhere in
the lower Logan Formation. Recent published biostratigraphic research has
indicated that the Black Hand and the Logan are Osagean (upper Lower
Mississippian).
The Black Hand Sandstone is
a thick, coarse-grained sandstone to pebbly sandstone unit that occurs in
several discrete, separated “lobes” in eastern Ohio. Traditionally,
lithostratigraphers consider the Black Hand Sandstone a member of the Cuyahoga
Formation. From central to eastern Licking County, a nice
“lateral facies change” can be seen, with gray shales of the Raccoon Shale
Member underneath the Logan Formation in the Granville-Newark area, and brown
sandstones of the Black Hand Sandstone Member underneath the Logan in the
Marne-Hanover-Toboso area. According to classical interpretations, Black
Hand sandstones are deltaic sands and Raccoon shales are prodeltaic muds.
Paleogeographic maps of the
Black Hand Sandstone in eastern Ohio show several "delta lobes" (the
Hocking Lobe, the Toboso Lobe, and the River Styx Lobe) extending from Jackson
County in the south to Medina County in the northeast (e.g., see Ver Steeg,
1947; Szmuc, 1970; Walker, 1978; Bork & Malcuit, 1981). Peculiarly,
the geometry of Black Hand distribution in map view is not consistent with the
geometry of deltas. The geometry is long, sublinear, and branching,
reminiscent of a drainage basin. Geologists at West Virginia University
have recently reinterpreted the Black Hand Sandstone as a nonmarine, incised
valley fill (Kammer & Matchen, 2002; Matchen & Kammer, 2002, in
press). This makes the Black Hand Sandstone genetically unrelated to the
sandstones, siltstones, and shales of the Cuyahoga Formation elsewhere in
Ohio. The Black Hand Sandstone should no longer be considered a member of
the Cuyahoga Formation, and is here considered a separate lithostratigraphic
formation.
The Black Hand Sandstone in
parts of Ohio produces some oil and natural gas. Oil drillers refer to
the Black Hand as the “Big Injun Sandstone”.
Location: roadcut along the northern
side of Marne Road (old Rt. 16), just southwest of Hanover, immediately north
of modern Rt. 16, eastern Licking County, Ohio, USA (at 40° 3' 53" North,
82° 16' 17" West).
References
Ver Steeg, K.
1947. Black Hand sandstone and conglomerate in Ohio. Bulletin of
the Geological Society of America 58: 703-727.
Szmuc, E.J.
1970. The Mississippian System. pp. 23-67 in Guide
to the Geology of Northeastern Ohio. Cleveland. Northern Ohio
Geological Society.
Walker, D.A.
1978. Paleontology and Paleoecology of the Cuyahoga and Logan
Formations of Central Ohio. Senior Thesis. Denison University,
Granville, Ohio, USA. 9+102+11+(1)+2 pp. 11 pls.
Bork, K.B. & R.J.
Malcuit. 1981. Cuyahoga and Logan Formations of central and eastern
Licking County, Ohio. Ohio Sedimentary Geology III. 21 pp.
Kammer, T.W. & D.L.
Matchen. 2002. Biostratigraphic constraints on the timing of valley
incisement and deposition of the Lower Mississippian Black Hand Sandstone of
Ohio. Geological Society American Abstracts with Programs 34(6):
428.
Matchen, D.L. & T.W.
Kammer. 2002. Reinterpretation of the Black Hand Sandstone (Lower
Mississippian) of Ohio as incised valley fill. Geological Society of
America Abstracts with Programs 34(6): 277.
Matchen, D.L. & T.W. Kammer. In press.
Incised valley fill interpretation for Mississippian Black Hand Sandstone,
Appalachian Basin, USA: implications for glacial eustasy at
Kinderhookian-Osagean (Tn2-Tn3) boundary. Sedimentary Geology.