THERE IS AN RV ON THAT OLENELLUS: DEVELOPING NOVEL GIS METHODS TO BETTER FIND AND ACCESS URBAN PALEONTOLOGICAL MATERIAL FROM THE CAMBRIAN KINZERS FORMATION, PENNSYLVANIA USA

Exceptionally preserved (soft-bodied) fossil material is rare in the fossil record, though such material offer’s the only opportunity to study certain aspects of paleobiology such as nervous systems, organ structures, or cellular development. South-central Pennsylvania is home to a world-renowned example of such preservation from the Cambrian Kinzers Formation (~520 Ma) of York and Lancaster counties. However, the Kinzers Formation does not outcrop well, can have major off-angle cleavage, and generally has a lack of accessible outcroppings due to the often-urban setting of the formation. Recently, Lancaster and York counties were scanned using ultra-precise Lidar (~0.3 m resolution). That high-resolution data, when combined with geologic spatial information, offers researchers new abilities to study outcrop extent and resources on a large scale. Here we report on this ongoing research developing new GIS techniques to identify outcrops in urban areas, access new or old (or lost) field localities, and its applications to other formations and sites.