GEOARCHAEOLOGY & PALEONTOLOGY OF GRAY'S REEF NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY

Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary is a series of exposed calcarenite outcrops on a drowned coastal plain. The University of Georgia (UGA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have identified a viable fossil locality composed of Pleistocene and Holocene taphocenose. Research studies begun in 1995 have recovered fossils as well as artefacts from a thick transgressive sand sheet and eroded reef facies. Vertebrate species include Equus, bison sp., mammuthus sp. and important invertebrates include bivalvia - scallops and oyster - that give insights into the paleoecology as well as eustasy and relative sea level (RSL). Sediment cores taken in 1996 and 2000, together with shallow seismic reflection, dating studies using AMS-radiocarbon and optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) have provided a basis for a working lithostratigraphy of the site. Palynological studies of the core sediments show mid-Wisconsin shifts in frequencies of the dominant oak-pine species