Leanne A. Knox’s research while affiliated with Brock University and other places

Tremadocian onlap is recorded by the Tribes Hill Formation. The formation is a lower Lower Ordovician (upper conodont Fauna B Interval(?)- Rossodus manitouensis Zone) depositional sequence that unconformably overlies the Upper Cambrian Little Falls Formation. Depositional environments and stratigraphy indicate that the Tribes Hill was deposited on a wave-, not tide-, dominated shelf and that a uniform, “layer-cake” stratigraphy is present. The deepening-shoaling sequence of the Tribes Hill includes the: 1) Sprakers Member (new; peritidal carbonate and overlying tempestite limestone and shale); 2) Van Wie Member (new; subtidal shale and limestone); 3) Wolf Hollow Member (revised; massive carbonates with thrombolitic cap); and 4) Canyon Road Member (new; glauconitic limestone and overlying evaporitic dolostone). The shoaling half-cycle of the Tribes Hill is older than a shoaling event in western Newfoundland, and suggests epeirogenic factors in earliest Ordovician sea-level change in east Laurentia. Conodont and trilobite biofacies track lithofacies, and Rossodus manitouensis Zone conodonts and Bellefontia Biofacies trilobites appear in the distal, middle Tribes Hill Formation. Twenty-four conodont species are illustrated. Ansella ? protoserrata new species, Iapetognathus sprakersi new species, Leukorhinion ambonodes new genus and species, and Laurentoscandodus new genus are described.

The Early Ordovician Tribes Hill Formation of east-central New York State is a sequence of peritidal to subtidal carbonates and minor shales that rests disconformably on Late Cambrian carbonates and is, in turn, succeeded disconformably by Middle Ordovician strata. More than 800 trilobites from 24 collections are assigned to six species: Bellefontia gyracantha (Raymond), Clelandia parabola (Cleland), Hystricurus ellipticus (Cleland), Hystricurus cf. Hystricurus oculilunatus Ross, Symphysurina convexa (Cleland), and Symphysurina cf. Symphysurina woosteri Ulrich. Two distinct biofacies are present: the Bellefontia Biofacies in subtidal shales with thin, storm-generated bioclastic interbeds, and the Gastropod–rostroconch Biofacies in shallow, carbonate bank lithofacies. The trilobites of the Tribes Hill Formation are assigned to a single, informal biostratigraphic unit, the Clelandia parabola Fauna, which is correlative with trilobite Zone B of the Garden City Formation of Utah and with the Bellefontia franklinense Subzone of the McKenzie Hill Formation of Oklahoma.