Hamilton Quarry

Hamilton Quarry is a Late Carboniferous lagerstätte near Hamilton, Kansas, United States. It has a diverse assemblage of unusually well-preserved marine, euryhaline, freshwater, flying, and terrestrial fossils (invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants). The habitat of some of these faunal elements, as for anamniotic stegocephalians, is debated; although some of these have traditionally been interpreted as freshwater inhabitants, some may have been euryhaline. This extraordinary mix of fossils suggests it was once an estuary. This type of Lagerstätte is considered a Konservat-Lagerstätte (or conservation lagerstätte), due to the quality the preservation of soft tissue (skin preservation).

The lagerstätte occurs within a paleovalley that was incised into the surrounding Carboniferous cyclothemic sequence during a time of low sea level and was then filled in during a subsequent transgression. The channel has a capping series of interbedded laminated limestones and mudstones for which are designated the Lagerstätte beds or ‘vertebrate horizon’. This facies contains a well-preserved mixed assemblage of terrestrial (conifers, insects, myriapods, reptiles), freshwater (ostracods), aquatic (amphibians, reptile), brackish or euryhaline (ostracods, eurypterids, microconchids, fish), and marine (brachiopods, echinoderms) fossils.

Paleobiota

According to thesis

Vertebrates

Arthropods

Mollusks

Other animals

Lycophytes and ferns

Seed ferns

Gymnosperms

Spores and Pollen

Fuslinids

External links

• Hamilton Quarry is managed by the at Emporia State University.
• The Surficial Geology of the Hamilton Quarry Area, Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) .