Talk:Marcellus Formation

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	An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on April 9, 2008.
May 20, 2008 Good article nominee Listed

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[edit] GA review

This is fairly nearly FA, so I'm going to dispense with the usual GA review.

The language is often a bit technical. I can understand it fine, but if you want to go farther - and this isn't that far off from FA Firstly, the section on fossils is not particularly good. As a biologist, I'd like to see more. Some photographs of outcrops of the formation would be useful, but not required.

In short, simplify the language a little bit, and use palaeontological sources, not geological to discuss the palaeontology. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The fossil section has been expanded from palaeontological sources, and additional sources have been tapped to expand the rest of the article as well. Also rather than simplifying the language, the technical terms are now better explained and given more context. Photo also included now, along with a table to support the description of members. Dhaluza (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] pictures?

I live near Marcellus, NY, and so found this article very interesting. I am not a scientist of any sort, but I found it understandable. I'd be happy to take more pics if you knew of a particular location in Marcellus. However, while I know of many locations nearby where there are shale outcroppings (including on my family beach on Skaneateles Lake), and I pass Slate Hill Road in Marcellus often, I couldn't begin to look at a shale bank and tell if it were Marcellus shale or some other kind. The shale on our beach seems to be a lighter color...I'd characterize it as gray, not black. Plus, it has many fossils, while the article says there are few in the Marcellus shale. I do work with someone who sold rights to a natural gas exploration company for some test wells on his property....he could have an outcropping. Anyway, I wanted to see how interested you are in more pics before spending much time on this. What do you think? Lvklock (talk) 11:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I found this: "At Marcellus numerous sink holes exist in the limestone which forms the base of the shales and far below the level of that rock many large springs of water make their appearance in Nine mile creek near by these show subterranean passages or excavations into which portions or blocks of upper masses have been let down to a lower level as we there find A little west of Nettleton's in the road and in the field on the north side are large fragments of the black limestone containing goniatites they were ploughed up and put aside for wall stone Between Onondaga hollow and Marcellus the turnpike passes over the lower shales where it rises to its greatest elevation The shales form the top of the hill east of Marcellus extending along the pond and rising with the upper shales to a considerable height on the south and west side of the village At the quarry of Seneca limestone there is five feet of shale upon that rock then a layer of very impure limestone breaking with a curved shaly fracture containing the Marcellus lingula and a small orthis which is also found in the road but not yet named Along the pond to the southeast the upper thick layer is seen with fragments of rather imperfect specimens of goniatites and orthocerae such as were before noticed." [1]

Also from the same source, "At the village of Marcellus [the Onondoga Limestone] forms the bottom of the creek at the mill It appears to be of a darker grey finer grained and less encrinal than usual but little however is exposed [2]. The shales above the creek bottom will be from the Marcellus, with the darkest shales near the bottom.

Good luck! Dhaluza (talk) 23:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)