Red House Formation
The Red House Formation is a geologic formation found in the Caballo Mountains in New Mexico. It preserves fossils dating back to the middle to late Pennsylvanian.Description
The formation consists mostly of thinly bedded dark gray limestone and shale or claystone containing limestone nodules and lenses. Some massive cherty limestone beds are locally present. It rests unconformably on the Lake Valley Limestone, Percha Shale, Cutter Dolomite, Upham Dolomite, or Cable Canyon Sandstone, with a thin sandstone bed at its base. Thickness is about. It is overlain by the Nakaye Formation.Fossils
Many of the beds are abundantly fossiliferous. The formation dates from the late Morrowan to the early Atokan.History of investigation
The formation was first described by V.C. Kelley and Caswell Silver in 1952 and assigned to the now-obsolete Magdalena Group. Bachman and Myers criticized its definition in 1975, but it is accepted by Kues and Giles. In 2016, Lucas et al. recommended that the local names Arrey Formation, Apodaca Formation, Fra Cristobal Formation, and Chuchillo Negro Formation be abandoned in favor of the Red House Formation.Footnotes
