The Devonian Scherr Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

Description

The Scherr Formation consists predominantly of siltstone and shale. Lower part of unit includes considerable fine-grained sandstone, while upper two thirds contains almost no sandstone. It weathers light olive gray.

Stratigraphy

Dennison (1970) renamed the old Chemung Formation the Greenland Gap Group and divided it into the lower Scherr Formation and the upper Foreknobs Formation. De Witt (1974) extended the Scherr and Foreknobs into Pennsylvania but did not use the term Greenland Gap Group. Boswell et al. (1987), does not recognize the Scherr and Foreknobs Formations in the subsurface of West Virginia, and thus, these formations are reduced from "group" to "formation" as the Greenland Gap Formation. The Minnehaha Springs Member is a "clastic bundle" consisting of interbedded medium gray siltstone and olive-gray shale with some grayish-red siltstone and shale and some sandstone. It is interpreted as turbidites. This same member is proposed to exist at the base of the Scherr's lateral equivalent, the Lock Haven Formation.

Notable outcrops

Age

Relative age dating places the Scherr in the late Devonian.

Paleontology

The Scherr Formation is the likely origin of the trace fossil Thinopus, which was described in 1896 by Othniel Charles Marsh as the earliest known tetrapod (land vertebrate). Later research, however, identified this fossil as coprolites (fossilized feces) of fishes.