Re: paleonet Union Chapel Mine

[Julie Bartley <jbartley@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy,

This is great news! The Union Chapel site is truly outstanding. The flora preserved in these shales are also pretty remarkable, and to have all the tracks, traces, and plants in the same spot in such abundance makes this locality well worth preserving. All the folks that put so much time into the effort to conserve this site should be commended.

Julie Bartley

At 04:59 PM 7/6/2004 -0500, you wrote:

After a long struggle, the Alabama Department of Conservation has acquired the Union Chapel tracksite, which was in danger of being covered up during reclamation of this coal mine. The tracksite has yielded hundreds of well-preserved Langsettian (Early Pennsylvanian) trackways and vertebrate swimming traces (Undichna), as well as invertebrate trace fossils such as Treptichnus and Kouphichnium. A multiauthored book on the site is in preparation under the auspices of the Alabama Paleontological Society. The news was reported online by the Huntsville Times at
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1088786787125281.xml
 
This comes soon after the preservation of the St. George tracksite for the public. I hope that other important tracksites can be set aside for research and display.
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
 
Geological Survey of Alabama
P.O. Box 869999
Tuscaloosa, AL 35486-6999, USA

----------------------------------------------------------

Julie K. Bartley

Associate Professor

Department of Geosciences

State University of West Georgia

Carrollton, GA 30118

770-830-2315

770-836-4373 (fax)

jbartley@westga.edu

-----------------------------------------------------------