Middle and Lower parts of Chickamauga Group, including Moccassin Formation, Bays Formation, Sevier Shale, Ottosee Shale, Holston Formation, Lenoir Limestone, and Athens Shale

Middle and Lower Parts of Chickamauga Group - A sequence of about 1,400 feet of limestone in the northwest part of Valley and Ridge, which thickens and becomes more clastic to the southeast and is divided into the formations shown at right. Maximum thickness about 7,000 feet. Includes Moccasin Formation - Maroon calcareous shale, siltstone, and limestone; thin metabentonite layers in upper part; mud cracks, ripple marks common. Thickness 800 to 1,000 feet;. (Ob) Bays Formation - Maroon, well-jointed claystone and siltstone, commonly mottled greenish, evenly bedded; light- gray sandstone beds and metabentonite in upper part. Maximum thickness 1,000 feet; (Osv) Sevier Shale - Calcareous, bluish-gray shale, weathers yellowish-brown; with thin, gray limestone layers; sandstone, siltstone, and locally conglomerate to the east. Thickness 2,000 to 7,000 feet; (Oo) Ottosee Shale - Bluish-gray calcareous shale, weathers yellow; with reef lenses of coarsely crystalline reddish fossiliferous limestone ("marble"). Thickness about 1,000 feet; (Oh) Holston Formation - Pink, gray, and red coarsely crystalline limestone (Holston Marble); in many areas upper part is sandy, crossbedded ferruginous limestone and brown to greenish calcareous shale. Thickness 200 to 600 feet; (Ol) Lenoir Limestone - Nodular, argillaceous, gray limestone; in places basal sedimentary breccia, conglomerate, quartz sand; Mosheim Limestone Member (dense, light- to medium-gray limestone) near base. Thickness 25 to 500 feet; (Oa) Athens Shale - Medium- to dark-gray, calcareous, graptolitic shale; calcareous gray sandstone, siltstone, and locally fine-pebble quartz conglomerate; nodules of shaly limestone near base. Maximum thickness 1,500 feet.