Stratigraphy of the Wakarusa Limestone Member of the Bern Formation (Wabaunsee Group, Virgilian Stage, Upper Pennsylvanian) of East-Central Kansas

Abstract

The Wakarusa Limestone Member of the Bern Formation crops out as a prominent east-facing escarpment in a northeast-trending belt across eastcentral Kansas. The limestone is light gray, hard, and fossiliferous. Horn corals are abundant locally. In Greenwood County a small, 18-foot thick algal bank has been identified. The member is interpreted to have been deposited under normal open-marine conditions in the shallow, warm Kansas Sea. The Wakarusa is the upper limestone member of the Bern Formation (Wabaunsee Group, Virgilian Stage, Pennsylvanian System). The Wakarusa crops out in a narrow band across east-central Kansas. The unit was named by J. W. Beede in 1898 for exposures along Wakarusa Creek just south of Auburn in southwestern Shawnee County. One of the best exposures now is along 170 just west of Topeka near the center of section 31, T. 11 S., R. 15 E. (Plate 1). The outcrop band extends diagonally south-southwest from Brown County in the north to Chautauqua County in the south. The best exposures are south of the Kansas River Valley. Because the Wakarusa is a prominent bench-forming limestone across most of the outcrop belt in eastern Kansas, it has received more-than-normal attention from surface mappers and stratigraphers. Following the initial work of Beede (1898), Condra (1927) extended his work south from Nebraska to include the Wakarusa. R. C. Moore followed with a series of reports on the Pennsylvanian in eastern Kansas, which included the Wakarusa (1936, 1937, 1948, 1949, and 1964). The unit has been mentioned in many other publications, theses, and dissertations. There are, however, three theses of particular importance (Owen, 1959; Ross, 1960; and Myers, 1968) and one short publication (Myers and Robbins, 1968). Many of the field guides in eastern Kansas also include a stop or two at an outcrop of the Wakarusa Limestone Member and adjacent beds. This short paper is intended to give This content downloaded from 157.55.39.203 on Sat, 27 Aug 2016 06:13:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 68 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE