A HISTORY OF GLACIAL GEOLOGY STUDIES IN MISSOURI

During the twentieth century, Quaternary studies in Missouri languished until the 1970s. At the same time, universities and state geological surveys in surrounding Midwestern states emphasized glacial stratigraphy, processes, and landforms. Only five dissertations prior to 1970 examined the glacial geology in Missouri: (R.M Trowbridge, 1938, J.E. Stone, 1950; S.N. Davis, 1955; L.J. Schmaltz, 1959, and A.G. Goodfield, 1963) and only two of these researchers graduated from a university in Missouri. This lack of interest was primarily because there were no faculty members at Missouri universities with a Quaternary research focus. Nor did the Missouri Geological Survey publish any significant glacial studies, though Howe and Heim (1968) identified a Quaternary deposit, the Ferrelview Formation above the till, based on research around the Kansas City International Airport site.

Beginning in the 1970's glacial geology research efforts increased in Missouri. A "Friends of the Pleistocene" field trip examined the loesses along the Missouri River near Kansas City (Bayne et al., 1971), W.H. Allen (1973) extended the loesses studies south of the river and the glacial border, King and Allen (1977) examined a Holocene vegetation record in the Mississippi valley and M.J. Guccione began dissertation field work on the glacial geology of northcentral Missouri. Guccione (1982) recognized two pre-Illinoian glacial advances into Missouri with the tills separated by a weakly developed soil. She also reinterpreted the Ferrelview Formation as a strongly developed upland paleosol developed through the Illinoian Loveland loess and into the underlying younger pre-Illinoian till rather than a deposit. This paleosol was eroded on the slopes of incised drainages, resulting in younger and more weakly developed soil profiles in these landscape positions. Since the 1990's C. W. Rovey at Missouri State U. has continued research on the glacial geology by identifying 5 pre-Illinoian tills and using cosmogenic nuclides to numerically date the till-paleosol sequences.