Field Excursions to the Appalachian Plateaus and the Valley and Ridge for GSA Connects 2023
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This volume offers guides for GSA Connects 2023 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, that cover a diverse range of geologic time and processes from the Paleozoic to Recent. Chapters address Paleozoic and Pleistocene glaciation; the interplay of geology and climate in shaping the landscape; and aspects of cultural geology, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and the setting of Youngstown, Ohio, USA.
A record of the Pleistocene: Periglacial landforms, deposits, and fauna in the Appalachian highlands of Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, USA
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Published:September 25, 2023
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CiteCitation
Rebecca Kavage Adams, Mark Swift, David K. Brezinski, Mitzy L. Schaney, J. Steven Kite, 2023. "A record of the Pleistocene: Periglacial landforms, deposits, and fauna in the Appalachian highlands of Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, USA", Field Excursions to the Appalachian Plateaus and the Valley and Ridge for GSA Connects 2023, Brett T. McLaurin
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ABSTRACT
During the Pleistocene, the Laurentian Ice Sheet extended southward into northwestern Pennsylvania. This field trip identifies a number of periglacial features from the Appalachian Plateaus and Ridge and Valley provinces that formed near the Pleistocene ice sheet front. Evidence of Pleistocene periglacial climate in this area includes glacial lake deposits in the Monongahela River valley near Morgantown, West Virginia, and Sphagnum peatlands, rock cities, and patterned ground in plateau areas surrounding the Upper Youghiogheny River basin in Garrett County, Maryland, and the Laurel Highlands of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, USA. In the high-lying basins of the Allegheny Mountains, Pleistocene peatlands still harbor species characteristic of more northerly latitudes due to local frost pocket conditions. Pleistocene fauna preserved in a cave deposit in Allegany County, Maryland, record a diverse mammalian assemblage indicative of taiga forest habitat in the Ridge and Valley province.
- Allegheny Group
- Appalachian Plateau
- Appalachians
- assemblages
- Carboniferous
- Cenozoic
- Chordata
- Conemaugh Group
- Devonian
- Dunkard Group
- field trips
- fossils
- glacial features
- glacial geology
- glacial lakes
- Glenshaw Formation
- guidebook
- Hampshire Formation
- lakes
- last glacial maximum
- Laurentide ice sheet
- Mammalia
- Maryland
- Mauch Chunk Formation
- Middle Pennsylvanian
- mining
- mires
- Mississippian
- North America
- Paleozoic
- patterned ground
- peatlands
- Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvanian
- periglacial features
- planar bedding structures
- Pleistocene
- Pottsville Group
- Quaternary
- rhythmite
- road log
- sedimentary structures
- sedimentation
- Tetrapoda
- United States
- Upper Devonian
- Upper Mississippian
- Upper Pennsylvanian
- Vertebrata
- West Virginia
- Rockwell Formation
- Casselman Formation
- Waynesburg Formation
- Purslane Formation
- Greenbrier Formation
- Greene Formation
- Washington Formation
- Cumberland Bone Cave
- Lake Monongahela