041917c

By the time the advance guard of cones had dragged their shells to the Plaza, there was no one left to sting. The cephalopods had been driven off; all that remained was a distant black cloud that quickly dispersed in the high-altitude current.

My latest geological publication

Kopaska-Merkel, David C., and Haywick, Douglas W., 2014, Small carbonate buildups in the Bangor Limestone (Chesterian) in and near Alabama, in, Puckett, T. Markham, and Rindsberg, Andrew K., eds., Stratigraphy and depositional systems in the Mississippian strata of the Appalachian Plateau, northwest Alabama, A guidebook for the 51st annual field trip, Alabama Geological Society, Tuscaloosa, p. 111-138.

Abstract

Carbonate mounds in the Mississippian of Alabama are small, unobtrusive, and sparsely distributed. Of eight known mounds, six are in the Bangor Limestone (Chesterian), one is in the Pennington Formation (late Chesterian), and one is in the Tuscumbia Limestone (Meramecian), in the subsurface. Nine other small mounds are known from the Bangor in southeastern Tennessee. A small Bangor mound in Blount County, first described as a rugose coral colony by Andronaco (1986), is here reinterpreted as a composite of coral colonies and muddy domains held up by a consortium of microbes, sponges, and fenestrate bryozoans. This is the first such mound reported from the Bangor.