SURVEYING AND CHRONICLING THE PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES OF VICKSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK

Vicksburg National Military Park (VICK) was established in 1899 to commemorate the Civil War Siege of Vicksburg in which the Confederate stronghold surrendered to the Union after a 47-day siege on July 4, 1863. Much attention at VICK has focused on the preservation of the Civil War battlefield and associated cultural resources, but unknown to many is that the park’s land is home to globally significant Lower Oligocene strata and fossils, among other important natural resources. Notable figures such as Charles Lesueur, Charles Lyell, and John Wesley Powell all studied the geology or collected fossils in the Vicksburg area. As part of a pilot National Park Service–Paleontological Society collaboration and the Scientists-in-Parks program, the first comprehensive paleontological resource inventory of VICK is underway involving both extensive field and literature-based efforts.

VICK contains many outcrops of the eponymously named Vicksburg Group, a fossiliferous Oligocene stratigraphic unit that stretches across multiple southern coastal states. The strata that comprise the Vicksburg Group, from oldest to youngest, are the Forest Hill, Mint Spring, Marianna Limestone, Glendon Limestone, Byram, and Bucatunna Formations. Each of these formations were confirmed within VICK boundaries, in addition to outcrops of the Miocene-age Catahoula Formation. VICK’s museum collections, which previously had no cataloged fossil specimens, have expanded to include fossils from the Mint Spring and Byram Formations, as well as from the Pleistocene loess that is exposed throughout the park. In addition, a better understanding of the diversity of terrestrial gastropod assemblages from the loess has been achieved through this project. Through examining pre-loess stream gravel, Paleozoic fossils transported by the ancestral Mississippi River were also discovered. VICK’s fossils span the Phanerozoic, and communicating this knowledge represents a new chapter in Vicksburg’s natural history.