Atlas of Early and Middle Paleozoic paleogeography of the southern Great Lakes area

Abstract

"In earlier presentations (for example, Droste, Shaver, and Lazor, 1975; Droste, Rexroad, and Shave, 1980) we have stressed that advancement of tectono-sedimentational knowledge of the southern Great Lakes area has been conditioned by (1) the provincialism of most studies and (2) the tendency to think of ancient Paleozoic regional structure too much in terms of present regional structure.

The first conditioning method above has been a necessary first step in overall study of this area as most individual geologists concentrated in one basin or another or in outcrop geology. As a result, necessarily somewhat independent and contradictory geologic histories have evolved for the Illinois Basin and the two other basins of special concern here, the Michigan and Appalachian Basins. Moreover, some classically generated concepts for the areas of the Cincinnati, Kankakee, Findlay, and Algonquin Arches and the Niagara Escarpment have remained too long uncoordinated with basin-developed knowledge. In this realization we have suggested that regional studies in the Indiana area, extended among three basin and integrating classic outcrop geology, are important keys to improved, integrated regional concepts."