Where: Smith County, Mississippi (32.0° N, 89.4° W: paleocoordinates 32.3° N, 82.9° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Mint Spring Formation, Rupelian (33.9 - 28.1 Ma)

• The Mint Spring Formation consists of fossiliferous sands that lie disconformably above the estuarine clays and sands of the Forest Hill Formation. This contact is characterized by shell gravels that are largely comprised of the bivalve "Callista", by lithified clay clasts bored by the bivalve "Jouannetia", and by shark and ray teeth. Lithified clay clasts are especially common at the base of the Mint Spring Formation along the Chickasawhay River in Wayne County. Here clay clasts are numerous enough to have produced a cobble bottom on the Mint Spring sea floor. These clasts formed a hard substrate utilized by a variety of encrusting organisms. The sands of the Mint Spring are moderately clean and often show cross-bedding. These sands indicate a near-shore shelf enviroment. At localities 89 and 90 in Smith County these marine sand facies have well-preserved fossils.

• formation-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: offshore; poorly lithified, conglomeratic, calcareous limestone and wackestone

Size class: mesofossils

Preservation: original aragonite, original calcite

Collection methods: bulk, mechanical,

• bivalves only.

Primary reference: D. T. Dockery. 1982. Lower Oligocene Bivalvia of the Vicksburg Group in Mississippi. Mississippi Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Geology 123:1-261 [L. Ivany/S. DeLong/M. Uhen]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 5941: authorized by Linda Ivany, entered by Sarah DeLong on 01.01.2000

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)