Staff of the I.B. Auerbach Geological and Mineralogical Museum and the V.R. Williams Soil‑Agronomic Museum traveled to the 55th km of the Moscow railway (Kurovskoye direction) to Gzhel station, where old limestone workings are located. Thus began another expedition undertaken to replenish museum funds and collections of natural specimens for practical classes.
These deposits belong to the Upper Carboniferous Gzhel horizon (about 300 million years), where, in a package of interbedded marls, the following fossil remains were found: among lower invertebrates — corals, bryozoans, polyps; among higher invertebrates — stems and plates of sea lilies (crinoids), as well as sea urchin spines. Among mollusks — gastropods of the genus Omphalotropus; among arthropods — remains of trilobites.
After that, the expedition headed east across the railway track to a quarry of refractory clays (the legendary Gzhel), where they observed terrigenous deposits of the same age. This is another facies part of the section, which practically contains no fossil remains but is lithologically very interesting. Photo report attached.
