Hunting the wild stromatolite at Vermillion Falls

The gorge at Vermillion Falls, as seen before, is cut through quite a bit of the Prairie du Chien Group. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that somewhere in all of those oodles of outcrop, there are some stromatolites. It should be just a matter of walking down and having a look, right? We-e-ll, easier said than done. A few factors are pushing against going from "predicted" to "established":

1) The classic booby prize of vertical exposures—sure, there's a lot of surface, but you don't get to see most of it up-close;

1b) Furthermore, for many of the places where you *can* examine the walls, you can't change your vantage point because backing up a foot or two puts you a foot or two lower or in open space (and that never helps). What makes this annoying with stromatolites is they can be expressed in various scales, and what you can't see with your nose on the rocks may be perfectly apparent from a couple of arm's lengths away except for that whole "absence of footing" thing, or a promising feature may disappear as you clamber up the slope to inspect it;

2) The surfaces have been fried to a crisp by weathering, which for our purposes disguises the fine layering and other subtle features.

The existing literature is not especially illustrative. Stauffer and Thiel (1941) included a section taken at the railroad bridge (now a footbridge), which describes the walls as 58.5 ft (17.8 m) of Shakopee Dolomite over 1 ft (0.3 m) of Root Valley Sandstone over 47 ft (14 m) of Oneota Dolomite, with nary a stromatolite mentioned (to be fair, the lithological descriptions are also very slim). The site has made it into a few theses and other student papers (Shea 1960; Squillace 1979; Robins 2005), but that seems to be about it. Maybe this limited documentation is a recognition of the above limitations by wiser heads than mine, but I have the faith of a gambler that something will turn up if I look long enough, so down we go back into the gorge.

Besides, why would I want to sit around inside when I could see things like this?

My strategy involves *not* looking directly for stromatolites, at least not the classic laminated features. I would never see them here except on fresh breaks. Instead, I'm looking for a couple of other features: bedding planes that are undulating rather than horizontal, and anomalously recessive intervals (I've seen elsewhere that stromatolitic intervals may be relatively erosion-prone compared to non-stromatolitic intervals). These two features should be visible even through the stain of weathering that began before the most recent Ice Age.

Down near the falls, in some of the lowest accessible beds, something very promising is apparent.

Left

Center

Right

We've definitely got an undulating surface that is appropriately stromatiform* in appearance, as well as being within an interval that is recessed. (In fact, the interval above is recessed in comparison to the interval above that, so this is not for people who don't like rocks poised above their heads [or, for that matter, people who have a phobia of birds pooping on them, because there are pigeons roosting in cavities above].)

*Google says it can come up with about 328,000 hits for "stromatiform". What it doesn't tell you is how many are useful and how many are just dictionaries, rhyming words, anagrams, pronunciations, and SEO things seeking to boost traffic with lists from dictionaries.

A little closer, between two apparent mounds

So stromatiform...

Obviously the next thing to do is to is to get close and look for finer details. That's where things become less clear. There are, conveniently, some fresh surfaces (not made by me!), and they do show alternating compositions. They are, however, rather thick layers.

Layers in one fresh surface.

Not quite as fresh, but you get the idea.

Layers on a spalled piece, frozen to the underlying moss.

I'd been hoping to find nice stacks of small columns beneath the undulating layers, but they aren't appearing (yet, at least). If we compare to Logan et al. (1964) and May et al. (2012), the latter also dealing with large Prairie du Chien stromatolites, it's as if we've skipped the columnar "Cryptozoon" stage and gone straight to broad "Collenia". This may say something about the local environment, or it may say that I'm just getting excited about some inorganic stromatiform-producing process.

Then there's whatever the heck is this. Bedded sedimentary rocks don't do things like this without a good reason.

If the issue is not immediately apparent, check the annotated version below and click to expand as necessary.

Too bad it was on the other side of the gorge. There's probably a way down somewhere...

References

Logan, B.W., R. Rezak, and R. N. Ginsburg. 1964. Classification and environmental significance of algal stromatolites. The Journal of Geology 72(1):68-83.

May, S. L., L. E. Davis, and D. G. Brown. 2012. Algal stromatolites in the Willow River Member of the Lower Ordovician Shakopee Formation near Chatfield, Minnesota, USA. The Compass: Earth Science Journal of Sigma Gamma Epsilon 84(1, Article 6):42–48.

Robins, C. 2005. The geology of the New Richmond Sandstone. Senior Integrative Exercise. Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.

Shea, J. H. 1960. Stratigraphy of the Lower Ordovician New Richmond Sandstone in the Upper Mississippi Valley. Thesis. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Squillace, P. J. 1979. The geology of the New Richmond Member of the Shakopee Formation (Lower Ordovician), Upper Mississippi Valley. Thesis. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Stauffer, C. R., and G. A. Thiel. 1941. The Paleozoic and related rocks of southeastern Minnesota. Bulletin 29. Minnesota Geological Survey, St. Paul, Minnesota.