Womble Shale

The Womble Shale is a Middle Ordovician geologic formation in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma. First described in 1892,^[3] this unit was not named until 1909 by Albert Homer Purdue in his study of the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, where he named this unit as part of the upper Ouachita Shale and the Stringtown Shale.^[4] In 1918, U.S. Geological Survey geologist, Hugh Dinsmore Miser, replaced Purdue's nomenclature with the Womble Shale.^[2] Miser assigned the town of Womble (now called Norman) in Montgomery County, Arkansas as the type locality. As of 2017, a reference section for this unit has yet to be designated.