Arkansas provides many great opportunities to explore nature, as the "Natural State" you will not want to forget your camera, a walking stick, and a buddy or two to go out and enjoy nature.
In this Earth Cache lesson you'll lean about Table Rock a form of Limestone
Limestone Walkway
The Table Rock in which you are walking is over 300 million years old.
As you have learned this area was covered by a sea long ago. This was a time known as the Paleozoic Era, which ran from about 542 million years ago to 251 million years ago. It was a time of great change on Earth. The era began with the breakup of one supercontinent and the formation of another. Plants became widespread. And the first vertebrate animals colonized land. Many of the fossils found in this type of limestone are from that era and as the lands uplifted and change, many marine life then died and was compressed thus creating what we now know as limestone. With a major overburden on mineral deposits and natural erosional processes, they have slowly worn away and the limestone changed from rough and sharp and lost much of the roughness and the edges have become smooth and pitted.
St. Joe Limestone comes in many layers. This natural walkway that you are observing highlights these trails and makes a long stretch to explore the beauty of the park. Limestone is fine grained and may occasionally contain some smoothly bedded chert. Limestone walls and formations can be feather thin to over 100 feet thick and go on for miles depending of formation and deposits. This unique location gives you a perfect example of what table rock is.
Limestone is more susceptible to erosional effects than that of much more dense minerals and thus is a great commercial property. They are frequently gray, but you can find Amber, purple, brown, pink and red colored limestone. Because of the erosional processes you may not find the typical fossils found in limestone untouched by man, but if you are careful and look along the edges there might be some marine life signs of long long ago.
Did you Know?
In it's purest form, the definition of Table Rock is any flat "table" like surface made of Rock. There are some well known examples of table rock in the US one closer to home is Table Rock Lake and State Park in Branson MO 60 miles away.
Requirements: (please do not put your answers in the log)
Now that we learned the basic qualities of table rock, take a moment to study ground zero. With the information above, and information at GZ you should be able to answer the following questions. You have 24 hours to send me an email (found in my geocaching profile) with the correct answers. Failure to do so will result in the removal of your "Found it log". Please add the GC code and title in the subject line. If you are sending answers for multiple people in your group, please add all the names in your email to ensure they don't have their log deleted :) Photos with you/group of the area would be greatly appreciated.
1 In your own words explain what table rock is.
2 The Placard at Ground Zero states one of the uses for table rock in the 1800 is what?
3 How old is this walk way estimated to be.
4 How wide is this pathway?
5 How long is this walkway?
6 What era is responsible for the major upheaval creating St. Joe Limestone?
Bonus While walking this beautiful natural walkway, see if you can find hidden fossils, and notice how the erosional process have not made this walk way smooth but more so pitted. From reading other lessons on the erosional process of limestone explain how these pits were created?