Bonneterre Formation

Early geologists offered a variety of names for what is now known as the Bonneterre Formation.^[1] In 1894, Missouri state geologist Arthur Winslow proposed St. Francois limestone as a name for thick limestone beds,^[6] including everything between what are now known as the Lamotte Sandstone and the St. Peter Sandstone.^[7] He described the lower part of that formation (now comprising the Bonneterre and the Elvins Group)^[8] separately as the St. Joseph limestone.^[9] Charles Rollin Keyes's Fredericktown limestone included everything between the Lamotte and the Potosi Dolomite when he first described it in 1896, but his later uses of the name were in a more restricted sense equivalent to the modern Bonneterre.^[10]

In 1901, Frank Lewis Nason was the first to apply the name Bonneterre (originally spelled Bonne Terre) to these rocks,^[1] identifying a type section near the city of Bonne Terre, Missouri.^[11]

The Bonneterre is conformably overlain by the Davis Formation. The Bonneterre Formation lies conformably on the Lamotte Sandstone and in places lies directly on the Proterozoic igneous core of the mountains.

In the outcrop area the Bonneterre has an average thickness of 375 to 400 feet. It is present in the subsurface throughout Missouri and has a maximum recorded thickness of 1580 feet under Pemiscot County in the Missouri Bootheel.^[5]

The dolomites and limestones of the Bonneterre Formation contain fossils of late Cambrian invertebrates. Algal stromatolites, echinoderms, and microfossils such as Girvanella are associated with fringing reef paleoecosystems surrounding the Cambrian islands that are now the St. Francois Mountains.^[12] A variety of trilobite fossils have been reported from the Bonneterre, including Coosella, Holcacephalus, Meteoraspis, Tricrepicephalus, and Welleraspis.^[13][14] Several monoplacophorans have also been described from the Bonneterre; one, Hypseloconus bonneterrense is named for the formation.^[14][15]

• Goebel, Edwin D. (1968). "Paleozoic Era". In Zeller, D. E. (ed.). The Stratigraphic Succession in Kansas. Kansas Geological Survey Bulletin 189. University of Kansas. p. 12.
• Kurtz, Vincent E.; Thacker, Joseph L.; Anderson, Kenneth H.; Gerdemann, Paul E. (1975). Traverse in Late Cambrian Strata from the St. Francois Mountains, Missouri to Delaware County, Oklahoma (PDF). Report of Investigations 55. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Research and Technical Information. LCCN 74-620007.
• Mossler, John H. (1987). Paleozoic Lithostratigraphic Nomenclature for Minnesota (PDF). Report of Investigations 36. University of Minnesota. ISSN 0076-9177.
• Stinchcomb, Bruce; Angeli, Nicholas (2002), "New Cambrian and Lower Ordovician monoplacophorans form the Ozark Uplift, Missouri", Journal of Paleontology, 76 (6): 965–974, doi:10.1666/0022-3360(2002)076<0965:NCALOM>2.0.CO;2
• Thompson, Thomas L. (1995). The Stratigraphic Succession in Missouri (Revised 1995) (PDF). 2nd. Vol. 40 (Revised ed.). Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Land Survey. LCCN 95-76805.
• Thompson, Thomas L. (2001). Lexicon of Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Missouri (PDF). Report of Investigation Number 73. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Land Survey. LCCN 2001089500.
• Winslow, Arthur (1894). Lead and Zinc Deposits. Vol. 6–7. Missouri Geological Survey.