Significance of the Goniatite Bilinguites eliasi and Associated Biotas, Parkwood Formation and Bangor Limestone, Northwestern Alabama

The Bangor Limestone contains conodonts, smaller calcareous foraminifers, and a sparse marine macrofauna dating it as late or latest Chesterian (Late Mississippian). The Parkwood Formation, a paralic sequence disconformably overlying the Bangor, has yielded a fauna containing the reticuloceratid ammonoid Bilinguites eliasi Manger and Saunders which permits correlation of the Parkwood Formation in north-western Alabama to the upper part of the Prairie Grove Member of the Hale Formation in the type Morrowan sequence. The macrofauna occurring with the ammonoid, supports this correlation. Bilinguites eliasi also alows correlation with the lower part of the Yeadonian Stage (lowest Namurian 'C') of Europe. Florules collected just below and above the goniatite occurrence in Frankling County correlate with those in the lower two-thirds of the New River Formation, southern West Virgina, and with the upper Namurian of western Europe. -from Authors