PROPOSED NEW PRINCIPLE REFERENCE SECTION, BEAD MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE (ALBANY GROUP, PERMIAN), NORTH-CENTRAL TEXAS

The Permian (Leonardian) Bead Mountain Limestone consists of evenly-bedded limestones and shales dipping gently (feet per mile) to the west along a 200 mile mapped extent from southern Concho Co. northward to central Baylor Co. where it ends by facies change to the continental beds of the lower part of Hentz's (1988) Waggoner Ranch Formation. The Bead Mt. represents a fairly shallow marine shelf paleoenvironment on the Eastern Shelf of the Midland Basin and contains a typical Permian mollusc-brachiopod paleo-fauna.

The Bead Mt. shares the general poverty of good exposures noted by many workers in the Paleozoic rocks of central Texas, in that exposures are intermittent, incomplete, or not readily accessible.

Since the latest field study of the Bead Mt. known to the authors (Stafford, 1960), a “new” roadcut (1969) has exposed over 70 vertical feet of the Bead Mt. along about 3000 feet (E-W) of US Hwy 180 west of Albany, TX. Our field work has shown that this exposure of the Bead Mt. is complete, and more accessible than those in the type area. For this reason, and to interest other workers in the here-to-fore (relatively) neglected Albany Gr. marine facies equivalents of the Wichita Gr., so extensively studied by Hentz and his colleagues, we informally propose a new principle reference section in accordance with Art. 8(e) of the North American Stratigraphic Code.