Pennsylvanian System

Type and reference sections and use of name: The name Survant Coal was applied by Fuller and Ashley (1902, p. 2) to exposures near the abandoned town of Survant in Pike County, Ind. Originally designated by Ashley (1899, p. 108-113) as Coal IV in Sullivan and Greene Counties, the coal is now known as the Survant Coal Member of the Linton Formation (Wier, 1961, 1965), and its type section is in the SW¼NE¼ sec. 2, T. 2 S., R. 7 W., at the south edge of Survant along the Patoka River. A reference section for the Survant was cored by the Indiana Geological Survey in SDH 306 (83.3 to 85.2 feet "5.3 to 26.0 m) near the type section (Hasenmueller and Ault, in preparation).

Description: The Survant Coal Member is highly variable in thickness (0.2 to 8 feet 0.1 to 2.4 m), is commonly divided into splits, and is thin or absent in some places. Local facies changes of the upper part of this coal to either a canneloid coal or a black bituminous shale are found north of Linton, Greene County. The Survant coal has a shale parting that is commonly less than a few feet thick but that reaches a thickness of 20 feet (6 m) in southwestern Greene County and south-eastern Clay County and 30 feet (9 m) in northwestern Vigo County. The Survant coal is commonly overlain and underlain by sandstones of variable thickness. The top of the Survant coal, which is also the top of the Linton Formation, is marked by sandstone or gray shale in the base of the Petersburg Formation.

Correlation: The name Survant is also now used in Illinois and Kentucky for this coal, which has been correlated throughout the Illinois Basin on the basis of subsurface data and palynology (Jacobson and others, 1985).