There are several variable beds of anhydrite and gypsum and the central body of most of the formation is a massive salt bed. Initially described as marine shales, the 500–700 feet (150–210 m) thick Wellington appears mostly as dark gray, thinly bedded soft rock, much of it terrestrial, with sediments from fresh water ponds and salt lakes.
Tens of thousands of insect fossil recovered from the Wellington shales are kept in major collections at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. The Wellington provides a rich record of Permian insects and its beddings provide evidence for reconstruction of tropical paleoclimates of the Icehouse Permian with the ability in cases to measure the passage of seasons. The formation's Hutchinson Salt Member is more recognized by the community than the formation itself, and the salt is still mined in central Kansas.
The Wellington Formation is an Early Permian geologic formation in Kansas and Oklahoma. Wellington Formation (Kansas) Show map of Kansas
0 kommentar(er)
