UNDERSTANDING THE MISSISSIPPIAN SYSTEM IN THE SOUTHERN MIDCONTINENT, ARKANSAS, MISSOURI AND OKLAHOMA: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The Geologic Time Scale (GTS) developed over the period 1760 (Tertiary - Arduino) to 1930 (Phanerozoic - Chadwick). The Carboniferous, its first systemic division, was proposed by Conybeare and Phillips (1822) for coal-bearing strata in northern Britain as the GTS developed in Europe. Application of the GTS to North American successions saw proposal of the Subcarboniferous (Owen, 1838) beneath the Coal Measures (Ure, 1829), but both names were abandoned in favor of Mississippian (Winchell, 1869) and Pennsylvanian (Williams, 1891). Use of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian as Systems in North America presented correlation problems for the rest of the world, which retained Carboniferous, until their acceptance as formal Subsystems (Subcommission on Carboniferous Stratigraphy , 1983), and a Global Stratigraphic Section and Point was established at Arrow Canyon, Nevada, (International Commission on Stratigraphy and International Union of Geological Sciences, 1996).

Southern midcontinent lithostratigraphic successions - Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma - have contributed to regional and global understanding of the Mississippian System (e.g. Craig and others, 1979). Type areas in Missouri for its component series - Kinderhookian, Osagean, Meramecan and Chesterian - and coeval and homotaxial strata in the southern Ozarks have provided faunal and floral data for global biostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic subdivision and correlation. These include ammonoids (Gordon, 1965; Saunders and others, 1977; Titus and Manger, 2001), articulate brachiopods (Henry and Gordon, 1992), calcareous foraminifers (Brenckle, 1977), conodonts (Collinson and others, 1971; Thompson and Fellows, 1970), and miospores (Owens and others, 1984). In the past decade, Lower Mississippian strata in Kansas and Oklahoma have become the target of a significant petroleum exploration program, and renewed interest in all aspects of surface and subsurface interval stratigraphy in the tri-state region.