The fossil you are looking for is on the top step of the entrance on the south side of the church. It should be pretty obvious.
The church is a masonry structure, meaning the building stone actually supports the structure, instead of being used simply as facing. It is made up of three Indiana building stones. The Laurel Limestone was quarried from Shelby County, Indiana. It is the rough-faced pale-green stone with solution holes along irregular parallel bedding that constitutes the walls. The familiar gray Salem Limestone is used in the steps, belt course, door and window embrasures, and lintels; it shows good fossil hash and cross-bedding, and trace-fossil trails (well exposed in the steps on the Meridian Street side). The gray Jeffersonville Limestone is the more massive-appearing, but laminate stone that makes up the quoins (corner blocks) and buttresses. This stone, which was quarried north of Scipio, Indiana, shows a good example of mudcracks in the corner block to the left of the Meridian Street stairs on the side facing away from the stairs.
On the top step of the entrance on the south side is a straight-shelled cephalopod. This is the focus of the earthcache. Find the cephalopod and send the answers to my email or geocaching account to get credit for the earthcache.
1. How long is the cephalopod?
2. What fossils do you see in the Salem Limestone on the steps on the Meridian Street side?
3. How long are the mudcracks in the Jeffersonville Limestone on the corner block to the left of the Meridian St stairs? Hint: they are on the side facing away from the stairs
4. Post a picture of yourself (face not required) or a personal item at the building.
Cephalopods
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda ("head-feet"). These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles (muscular hydrostats) modified from the primitive molluscan foot. Fishermen sometimes call them inkfish, referring to their common ability to squirt ink. The study of cephalopods is a branch of malacology known as teuthology.
Cephalopods became dominant during the Ordovician period, represented by primitive nautiloids. The class now contains two, only distantly related, extant subclasses: Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish; and Nautiloidea, represented by Nautilus and Allonautilus. In the Coleoidea, the molluscan shell has been internalized or is absent, whereas in the Nautiloidea, the external shell remains. Two important extinct taxa are the Ammonoidea (ammonites) and Belemnoidea (belemnites).