Highlights of a short ichnological exploration of the Winterhouse Formation at Long Point on the Port au Port Peninsula, western Newfoundland.

The Winterhouse Formation is of Late Ordovician age, sitting in the Long Point Group between the Lourdes and Misty Point Formations.  We have been interested in the unit as it sits around the oil window, and there has been some prior work on the palaeontology Bergstrom 1974 and palynology Gillespie 1998 (unpublished MSc thesis Memorial University- helen still works here in the CREAIT facility).  I saw my first Receptaculites which was a suprise.  I am kind of intrigued by them- it is ages since I came across a type of fossil I have never even heard of.

Congratulations to Dr. Richard Callow on being appointed as postdoc to a short project supported by the Petroleum Exploration Enhancement Program.

Rich has been in the field this month studying the type sections of the Bradore Formation in Labrador and on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. 

Ophiomorpha rud...

My research is focussed upon using trace fossils to help understand depositional environments in deep water turbidites.  The Rosario Formation in Baja California, Mexico, are an excellent case study, because the depositional environments, architecture, stratigraphy and evolution of these channel turbidite rocks have been studied by members of the “Slopes 2 Consortium” (www.turbidites.org) for several years, and I have been working in the field with other members of this research team. Surprisingly, the trace fossils within this system have not been studied in detail until now, and as with other turbidite systems, they have not been studied systematically across the range of depositional environments present in these settings.