Mississippian limestones

Mississippian limestones are composed of the disarticulated remains of crinoids. Upon their death, the plates of individual crinoids accumulated as sand-sized sediment on the seafloor to be cemented later by calcium carbonate. Crinoid fragments were frequently reworked by currents, and their associated deposits exhibit both cross-bedding and ripple marks. Deposits of crinoidal limestone approaching 150 metres (500 feet) are not uncommon in intervals of Mississippian age, particularly in North America, and they are exploited as quarry stone. In addition to the crinoidal limestones, oolitic limestones and lime mudstones also formed in shallow-water marine environments of the Mississippian. Ooliths are concentric spheres of calcium carbonate inorganically precipitated around a nucleus. They were deposited on warm marine shelf margins receiving high wave energy similar to the present-day Bahama Shelf and northern Red Sea. These deposits also exhibit cross-bedding and ripple marks reflective of high-energy conditions. Mixtures of ooliths and abraded fossil fragments, particularly foraminifers (pseudopod-using unicellular organisms protected by a test or shell), are common in the Mississippian strata.

Lime mudstones reflect quiet shallow-water environments, such as are found in Florida Bay and on the west side of Andros Island, Bahamas, that may have been exposed by tidal change. The carbonate mud was produced through the life cycle of green algae, but fossils are not particularly common in these lithologies. Deposits of these Mississippian limestones are frequently used as quarry stones as well. In the upper portion of the Mississippian, marine cycles are developed, probably reflecting the beginning of mountain-building in the Appalachian region of eastern North America. Quartz sandstones typically began each of these cycles as the seas transgressed across the continental interiors. Shales may have succeeded the sandstones and were followed by limestone development reflecting the clearance of the water and the establishment of carbonate production by animals and plants.

Limestones of Mississippian age are typically associated with lenses and beds of chert (silicon dioxide). The origin of this chert is somewhat uncertain, but it appears to reflect either primary or secondary origin. Chert of both origins may occur within a single limestone unit but reflect different times of silicification. Primary cherts formed penecontemporaneously (with small folds and faults) with deposition of the limestones in slightly deeper water settings. Secondary chert formed as a later replacement by groundwater usually involving shallower water deposits. Penecontemporaneous cherts are frequently dark coloured (flint) and disrupt the bedding rather than follow it. They usually lack fossils. Later chert is light coloured, follows the bedding, and is usually fossiliferous.

Deeper, intracontinental basins and deep ocean troughs (geosynclines) are characterized by Mississippian terrigenous clastics deposited as turbidites.

Pennsylvanian cyclothems, tillites, and turbidites

Cyclothems occur on a worldwide basis throughout Pennsylvanian strata; however, they have been most widely studied in North America. The cyclothems display one of two types of development. In the eastern interior of North America, where they were first studied, one cyclothem may consist of as many as 10 separate beds reflecting a single advance and retreat by shallow seas. The lower portion of the cyclothem is predominantly nonmarine and consists of (in ascending order) a sandstone, shale, “freshwater” limestone, underclay (buried soil), and a coal bed. The upper portion of the cyclothem reflects marine conditions and exhibits alternating shale and limestone beds, both of which usually contain fossils. The nonmarine sequence probably represents deltaic conditions associated with the regression that allowed swamp conditions to develop on a delta plain. Marine transgression began with the shale beds overlying the coal. Rapid retreat ends each cycle, which is capped by an unconformity. Most cyclothems are incomplete; they do not exhibit the full sequence of beds.

Cyclothems of the Appalachian Basin coal fields in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia typically have good representation of the nonmarine portion of the sequence with thick coals. These coals formed from the carbonization of plant debris, and it is generally held that one metre of coal equals the compaction of approximately five times as much plant material. Some coals exhibit remarkable thicknesses. The Mammoth coal bed of the Anthracite Belt in eastern Pennsylvanian has an average thickness of 10–12 metres (35–40 feet) throughout its extent. The Pittsburgh seam in western Pennsylvania averages 4 metres (13 feet) thick and is reported workable over 15,540 square km (6,000 square miles). More than 60 coal seams have been identified in Pennsylvania, although only about 10 have ever been exploited. Coeval cyclothems in the western midcontinent have better development of the marine portion of the sequence with fewer and thinner coals.

In contrast to the coal cyclothems, predominantly marine intervals of Pennsylvanian age in the western midcontinent (Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri) exhibit cyclothems involving alternations of limestone and shale. These cyclothems also reflect transgression and regression by shallow seas, but the lower portion of the cycle is the transgressive event, followed by regression in the upper part. The cyclothem begins with a sandy shale containing marine fossils. It is succeeded by dark, carbonate mudstones that are, in turn, overlain by black shale. The black shale marks the maximum marine transgression. Above the black shale, marine carbonate mudstones and grainstones occur, followed by a return to sandy shale. One striking feature of both coal and marine cyclothems is the tremendous lateral persistency of beds within the sequence. Tracing of a single bed from outcrop to outcrop over a distance of hundreds of kilometres is not uncommon in the midcontinent.

Depositional cycles similar to those of eastern North America can be recognized in Europe, but distribution of those sediments is confined to small isolated basins instead of a broad cratonic shelf. Nonmarine sequences predominate, and indeed some sequences exhibit no marine influence at all. Positioning of the basins is the result of folding and faulting reflective of the mountain-building of the Hercynian orogenic belt. The Middle and Upper Carboniferous record of western Russia and Ukraine is similar to that of North America.

In the Southern Hemisphere, there is a marked cooling event beginning near the boundary separating the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods. Faunas and floras after that time are highly provincial, impoverished, and adapted to the cold climates that persisted into the Permian Period. Pennsylvanian glacial deposits of the Gondwana Realm are characterized by tillites resting on polished and striated bedrock surfaces. Striated cobbles, glacio-fluvial deposits, and varved (deposited in still water) lacustrine (lake) sediments occur over large areas of present-day South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica. The extensive development of these unusual deposits has been used to support the theory of continental drift. The timing of these glacial episodes is still uncertain, and they may have actually begun during Mississippian times. Furthermore, many glacial advances and retreats occurred that were not necessarily simultaneous over the whole of Gondwana.

Areas marginal to continental masses continued to receive turbidites, particularly in the Ouachita-Marathon region of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas and the Cordilleran geosyncline in the western United States. Evaporites formed in restricted basins, such as those in Montana-North Dakota (Williston) and the Four Corners area in Utah-Colorado (Paradox Basin), that lay near the Pennsylvanian paleoequator. Igneous and metamorphic rocks of Pennsylvanian age reflect the Hercynian orogeny and its equivalents in North America, Europe, and North Africa.