The Chazy Reef Formation is considered the oldest fossil reef in the world. It's in Vermont . . . and New York.
Now the formation has been named a National Natural Landmarks (NNL) by the National Park Service (NPS).
New NNL sites, including the reef in Vermont, are Nottingham Park Serpentine Barrens, Penn.; Cave Without a Name, Texas; Big Bone Lick, Kentucky.
The Nottingham Park Serpentine Barrens support unique vegetation communities that contain many "rare and endemic species." The site also has one of the state’s largest stands of pitch pine forest.
Cave Without a Name contains "exceptional cave formations, a rare and threatened salamander, and significant paleontological deposits."
Big Bone Lick in Boone County, Kentucky, is unique for "its combination of salt springs and associated Pleistocene bone beds. The site has been referred to as the birthplace of vertebrate paleontology in North America."
The Chazy Fossil Reef in Grand Isle County, Vermont, and Clinton County, New York, contains surface exposures of an Ordovician fossil reef. The reef recounts the tropical, marine environment that existed approximately 450 million years ago on the continental shelf of North America.
"This paleontological treasure represents the oldest known occurrence of a biologically diverse fossil reef in the world, the earliest appearance of fossil coral in a reef environment, and the first documented example of the ecological principle of faunal succession," according to a NPS news release.
Since 1962, the NNL program has supported the cooperative conservation of important natural areas on private, state,
municipal, and Federal land. There are now 586 listed sites.
The Chazy Reef is located at the northern end of Lake Champlain. Two local preservation groups bought the parcel in the middle of the Isle La Motte in Vermont.
