Devonian System
Type section: The name Selmier Member of the New Albany Shale was first used by Lineback (1968, 1970) for greenish-gray to olive-gray shale exposed in its type section on the south wall of the Berry Materials Co. quarry in the NE¼NW¼ sec. 34, T. 7 N., R. 8 E., Jennings County, Ind. The name was taken from the Selmier State Forest, which is 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of the type exposure .
Description: Although the member is composed primarily of gray shale, it also contains thin beds of brownish-black shale, dolomite, limestone, and quartzose sandstone. It contains a fauna of conodonts and a few pelecypods and gastropods, and burrows and trace fossils are common. The subsurface Selmier was redefined by Hasenmueller and Bassett (1981) to include some of the dark-gray shales that Lineback (1970) included in the upper part of the underlying Blocher Member. At the base of the Selmier are light-gray quartz sandstone beds and laminae. These beds are present in a core from Jackson County (Hasenmueller and Bassett, 1981) and at several outcrops in Jennings, Scott, and Jefferson Counties (Lineback, 1970). North, west, and south of Jennings County and eastern Jackson County, the quartz-sandstone beds thin and are fewer in number (Hasenmueller and Bassett, 1981). The Selmier is absent from most of Harrison, Floyd, and Clark Counties. The member is 6 feet (1.8 m) thick near Scottsburg in Scott County and thickens northward to more than 40 feet (12 m) in southwestern Bartholomew County. The northward thickening of the Selmier in the shallow subsurface appears in part to be the result of a facies relationship with the overlying Morgan Trail Member (Hasenmueller and Bassett, 1981). The Selmier thickens to the southwest and in Posey County attains its maximum known thickness of 126 feet (38 m).
Correlation: The Selmier Member corresponds to the Spathiocaris Zone of Campbell (1946). Samples from the base of the member contain conodonts that are indicative of the doI division of the German Devonian standard (Collinson and others, 1967). And a single sample from the upper part of the Selmier contains Palmatolepis quadrantinodosalobata, which is indicative of the doII division of the German Devonian standard (Collinson and others, 1967).
The Selmier Member is correlative with an unnamed shale of Meents and Swann (196b), the Sweetland Creek Shale of the New Albany Group mapped by North (1969, fig. 22) in southeastern Illinois (south of his vertical cutoff), the Sweetland Creek Member of the New Albany Shale mapped by Schwalb and Norris (1980b) in northwestern Kentucky, and the lower part of the Sweetland Creek Shale mapped by North (1969) in the northeastern part of the Illinois Basin in Illinois. The Selmier is also mostly equivalent to the Selmier Shale mapped by Cluff and others (1981) in southeastern Illinois. It is not recognized in the Michigan Basin, but it is stratigraphically equivalent to part of the Antrim Shale of northern Indiana and Michigan (Lineback, 1968, 1970). It is lithologically similar to the Olentangy Shale of Ohio and may be equivalent to the upper part of the Olentangy, which Tillman (1970) determined is Late Devonian in age primarily on the basis of ostracod faunas (Hasenmueller and Bassett, 1981). The Selmier is also equivalent to the upper part of the Dowelltown Member of the Chattanooga Shale of Tennessee (Lineback, 1970).
The sandstone beds at the base of the Selmier are in the same stratigraphic position as thin sandy beds in the lower part of the Selmier Shale in eastern Illinois. These sandy beds in eastern Illinois have been tentatively equated with the Sylamore Sandstone in central and western Illinois by Collinson and Atherton (1975, p. 122). (See Lineback, 1970, and Hasenmueller and Bassett, 1981.)