Shanxi Fm

The reference section is located in the West Hills of Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. At the time of its naming, no type section had been designated. It was named by Blackwelder E. in 1907.

Clastics and Coal. Composed essentially of continental sedimentary sandstone, shale and claystone, and is divisible into the Lower and Upper members. Lower member, the Beichagou Member, starts from below the base boundary of the Beichagou Sandstone and going upward till the top of the brachiopod-rich (Lingula) shale occurring at the top of the No.3 Coal Layer, represents a suite of interbeds of grey-white coarse-grained quartz-greywacke, intercalated with lithoclastic feldspar-quartz greywacke and microclastic rocks (kaolinite, siltstone and kaolinitic hydromica siltstone, siltstone), among them there occur several major coal layers. Upper member, the Xiashicun Member, starts from below the feldspar-quartz- sandstone occurring on the top of the Lingula-rich shale going up to the base of the Luotuobzi Sandstone. This particular member is composed chiefly of interbeds of microclastic rocks and coal seams, among which the No.2 Coal Layer represents one of the minable coal seams, whose roof is possessed of a layer of sideritic siltstone lenses which represents grey lamellar siltstone with a cone-in-cone structure and marl, namely the Xiashicun Limestone of the Tiemogou Limestone, above which there occurs medium-, and fine-grained lithoclastic sandstone (the Tiemogou Sandstone). It has its best development in the West Hills of Taiyuan City, where it is 30-80-m or more thick, commonly its thickness ranges from 50 to 70 m.

Lower Member -- The main fossils comprise Bivalves represented by Dunbarella whitei; Gastropoda represented by Bucanopsis calamitoides; Plant fossils (phytolites) represented by Odontopteris subcrenulata, Rhacopteris bertrandii; and Brachiopods represented by Lingula, etc. In the Liuzigou and Zhoujiazhuang areas there occurs a layer of black thin plate high-carbonaceous shale containing pyrite concretions, yielding inarticulate brachiopods, Lingula, and bivalve fossils, with a thickness of about 1.4 m.

Upper Member -- The key fossils comprise the Plant fossils (phytolites) represented by Lepidodendron posthumii, Callipteridium koraiense, etc.

The plant fossils (phytolites) in the formation belong to the Cathaysia flora, or to the A-Phase Emplectopteris triangularis-Emplectopteridium alatum assemblage of the Emplectopteridium triangularis-Taeniopteris system.

It is interpreted as a largely delta-littoral plain-facies.