Mississippian System

Type locality and history of name in Indiana: The Haney Limestone was named by McFarland and others (1955, p. 18) for exposures on Haney Creek, Hardin County, Ill. The formation is dominantly limestone, includes some shale, and is 36 feet (11 m) thick. The Haney is now a unit in the standard Chesterian section (Rexroad and Jarrell, 1961; Swann, 1963; Willman and others, 1975, p. 157).

In Indiana the Haney Limestone was for many years known as the Golconda Limestone. As first described by Malott (1919, p. 18-19), the Golconda of Indiana usage included at its base a unit about 20 feet (6 m) thick of inter bedded fossiliferous shale and thin beds of limestone. Later, without explanation, Malott and Thompson (1920, p. 522) separated this unit and named it the Indian Springs Shale. Still later, and again without explanation, the shale was reinstated into the Golconda, for example, by Malott, Esarey, and Bieberman (1948).

Partly to make the lithologic term limestone more appropriate, Gray, Jenkins, and Weidman (1960, p. 39-40) restricted the name Golconda to the major limestone unit. As so defined, the term applied only to the upper part of the Golconda Group of the standard Chesterian section (Swann, 1963, p. 68). The inadvisability of this was noted by Gray (1970, p. 66), and the name Haney was later adopted (Gray, 1974). The underlying shale unit is now designated the Indian Springs Shale Member of the Big Clifty Formation.

Description: In Indiana the Haney Limestone is dominantly biomicritic and includes skeletal limestone and micritic dolomite. Shale is a minor constituent. The formation is 20 to 40 feet (6 to 12 in) thick and contains abundant blastoids of the genus Pentremites, crinoid plates, and bryozoans, including Archimedes (Malott, Esarey, and Bieberman, 1948, p. 24). The Haney can be recognized in surface exposures from northern Greene County to the Ohio River and is known in the subsurface from Owen County southwestward. A lithofacies and biofacies analysis of the Haney Limestone in the Illinois Basin was made by Vincent (1975).

The Haney Limestone conformably overlies the Big Clifty Formation and is overlain conformably by the Hardinsburg Formation or disconformably by the Mansfield Formation (Morrowan). A local, apparently disconformably relationship at the base of the Hardinsburg Formation in the subsurface was illustrated in Illinois by Potter (1963, p. 58, fig. 42A) and in Knox and Gibson Counties, Ind., by Kline (1952), but no such feature has been seen along the outcrop.

Correlation: The Haney Limestone is recognized throughout the Illinois Basin. It lies within the range zone of the crinoid Pterotocrinus rugosus Lyon and Casseday, which in the basin is restricted to the Golconda Group (Welch, 1978). It correlates with rocks that are within North American foraminiferal Zone 16s of Mamet and Skipp (1971) and that are near the top of the Visean Series (Zone 3cs) of European usage. On the basis of its contained conodont, the Haney has been assigned to the Gnathodus bilineatus-Cavusgnathus altus Assemblage Zone of North American usage (Collinson, Rexroad, and Thompson, 1971).