Stromatoporoids in a Devonian reef

Here are a few shots of a Devonian aged reef exposed in Mustoe, Virginia – one of the sites I visited this spring with GMU’s Rick Diecchio, when he led his sedimentology and stratigraphy trip there.

At first, the outcrop made no sense to me – I kept searching for bedding, and failed to find it. Then, the reef interpretation clicked, and suddenly I didn’t “need” bedding any more…

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Stromatoporoids were probably spongelike organisms, with layers like stromatolites, but in those layers they have a tiny architecture of ‘rooms’ and ‘pillars’…

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A lot to see here – certainly a site I should return to some day with a GigaPan.

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