Yes, you are looking for fossilized ALGAE at this roadcut. Please be sure you PULL OVER FULLY (there is space), and that you remain aware of your surroundings. You are in "the middle of nowhere" so there MAY BE little traffic. You will see both shale and limestone in the roadcut. You are looking in the limestone for the algae.
Logging Requirements:
1. Find the fossilized algae. It is wavy seams in the limestone part of the exposure. describe color, size, pattern (such as sponge beehive, spiderweb, etc.).
2. Look for other fossils such as brachiopods and crinoids. Did you find them in the limestone or in the shale?
3. Based on the description below what type of fossilization took place here?
Geology:
This area has been influenced by water for thousands of years. Prior to the modern times, this area was part of the ancestral river valley for the "pre-Grand river." The flat area you are crossing "is now the divide separating the drainage basins of the Platte and Grand Rivers.
Pennsylvanian limestone and shale beds of the Kansas City Group appear along both sides of US 36 and are viewable at several locations between County Road K and Chillicothe. There are several folds (anticlines and synclines) in the region, and that is what has uplifted the fossils so that they are visible for this earthcache. However, there isn't a place on the Highway where the named "King City-Quitman Anticline" is visible (or I would have written an earthcache for that spot too!)
Fossils:
Fossils form in several ways -- your logging task (#3) is to identify how the ALGAE was formed. Here is an explanation I find helpful from backyardnature.net
- unaltered preservations(An ancient insect encased in rock-like amber is a classic example.)
- permineralization or petrification (Minerals slowly seep into the organism's body and replace the original tissues, forming a rock-like fossil. This process can preserve both hard and soft parts. Most bone and wood fossils are permineralized. )
- replacement (An organism's hard parts are replaced by minerals.)
- carbonization or coalification (When the organism dies most of the elements in its body -- such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen -- are removed, but the carbon, which appears not only in living bodies but also in diamonds, coal and many other mineral items, remains.)
- recrystalization (The more stable minerals in an organism's body form small or crystals already present grow into larger crystals.)
- authigenic preservation (Before organisms disappear somehow molds or casts are made of them -- as when volcanic ash fell on the people of Pompeii so that today we see casts of their bodies lying where they died.)
I find it intriguing that most of Missouri's fossils are not viewable by the naked eye, but rather can only be seen under a microscope. According to a book "Common Fossils of Missouri" (preview on books.google.com), there are lots of pre-tree, seeds, spores, etc. plant matter fossils that exist in multiple layers of the geologic column portions that are exposed in MO.
The earliest algae-like masses appear in the Cambrian Bonne Terre dolomite. (Common Fossils of Missiouri p. 54)
Resource:
Spencer, Charles G. Roadside Geology of Missouri. Mountain Press Publishing Co, Missoula: Montana. 2011.
Unklesbay, A. G. Common Fossils of Missouri. Online. 18 June 2018.