REDWALL LIMESTONE & SURPRISE CANYON FORMATION

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Fig. 16

The Redwall Limestone contains bryozoan fossils, preferentially silicified blue-green algal mats, and crinoidal debris, whereas the Surprise Canyon Formation contains various types of corals, brachiopods, and echinoderms with reported forms of bivalves, gastropods, cephalopods, trilobites, and shark teeth. The Surprise Canyon Formation has also yielded a moderate amount of plant fossil material, infact, 22 species of spores were identified from the Granite Park area. The Redwall Limestone sediments were deposited in a shallow epeiric sea that produced a submerged continental shelf across northern Arizona. The deposits were fromed during two major transgressive-regressive pulses. The distribution and nature of the Surprise Canyon strata suggest that the entire formation was deposited within the confines of a broadly dendritic stream valley system and in the associated caves and collapsed depressions formed on a limestone platform.




Fig. 17 - Algal stromatolites (oncolites) from near the top of the Surprise Canyon Formation at Quartermaster Canyon section 4. Centimeter scale. Fig. 18 - Fossil nautiloid on stream-polished outcrop of Mississippian Redwall Limestone.