Late Cambrian cabbage-head stromatolites from Saratoga Springs, New York, USA

Abstract

Saratoga Springs, New York, is the site of one of the finest examples of domed stromatolites to be seen anywhere in ancient rocks and is significant in the history of geology as the area where stromatolites were first described and interpreted. These cabbage-head structures, which are part of the Hoyt Limestone of Late Cambrian (Late Franconian to Early Trempeleauan) age, were described by James Hall as early as 1847. Glaciated surfaces expose horizontal sections of the cabbage-shaped heads composed of vertically stacked, hemispherical stromatolites. The microbial heads are discrete domal structures built of hemispheroidal and bulbous stromatolites expanding upward from a base. The heads, many of them compound, are circular in horizontal section, and range in diameter from a few centimeters to a meter. Between the heads are ooids, skeletal fragments of trilobites, brachiopods, pelecypods, and quartz-sand particles.