Type Locality:

Kentville, Kings County, Nova Scotia (NTS 21 H/2).

Distribution:

The formation is 480 m thick in the Wolfville area (NTS 21 H/1), 600 m on Fales River (NTS 21 A/15), and up to 1,050 m to the southwest towards Gaspereau Lake.

Locality Data:

Thickness(m): Maximum 1050.

Lithology:

Predominantly slate with minor siltstone. The sediments were deposited in a shallow marine environment.

Relationship:

In the Wolfville area, the Kentville Formation is conformably underlain by the Ordovician to Silurian White Rock Formation and conformably overlain by the Upper Silurian New Canaan Formation. In the western part of Gaspereau Lake (NTS 21 A/15), Smitheringale (1960) found it impossible to distinguish between rocks of the Kentville Formation and the underlying slates. He assumed that a facies change caused the disappearance of the Kentville Formation as a mappable lithologic unit, and stratigraphically equivalent rocks he therefore included in the White Rock Formation. In the Annapolis-St. Marys Bay area (NTS 21 A/12), Taylor (1965) had a map unit of undivided White Rock and Kentville formations. The Kentville is much less siliceous than the underlying White Rock Formation and the overlying Lower Devonian Torbrook Formation. The Kentville grades into the Torbrook Formation through the appearance of quartzite, indicating a change in provenance or the conditions of deposition.

History:

The name Kentville Formation was used by Ami (1900a, 1900b, 1900d) for rocks near Kentville. Faribault (1909) separated parts of the original Kentville into units now called the Halifax Formation and the White Rock Formation. Crosby (1962) revised the Kentville Formation "as those sedimentary rocks, slate with minor siltstone, that apparently conformably overlie the White Rock Formation and are conformably overlain by the New Canaan Formation." As the New Canaan Formation has not been recognized outside the Wolfville area, Smitheringale (1960) considered the Kentville Formation to include all the rocks which lie between the White Rock Formation and the Torbrook Formation. Taylor (1965) modified the definition to read "the Kentville Formation comprises those sedimentary rocks, mainly shale with minor siltstone, that apparently conformably overlie the White Rock Formation and are conformably overlain by the New Canaan Formation or the Torbrook Formation."

Other Citations:

Crosby, 1962.

References:

Ami, H.M., 1900a. Notes bearing on the Devono-Carboniferous problem in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; Ottawa Naturalist, vol. 14, no. 7, pp. 121-127.

Ami, H.M., 1900b. On the geology of the principal cities in eastern Canada; Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series 2, vol. 6, part 4, pp. 125-173.

Ami, H.M., 1900d. pp. 179A-180A: in G.M. Dawson, Summary Report on the Operations of the Geological Survey for the Year 1900; Geological Survey of Canada, Annual Report for 1900, 203A p.

Crosby, D.G., 1962. Wolfville map-area, Nova Scotia (21 H/1); Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 325, 67 p.

Cumming, L.M., 1957. Report on fossils from the Torbrook-Nictaux area, Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Unpublished Report no. S-D 1-56/57.

Cumming, L.M., 1959a. Report on fossils from the Bear River area, Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Unpublished Report no. S-D 3-59/60.

Faribault, E R., 1909. Southern part of Kings and eastern part of Lunenburg counties, Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Summary Report for 1908, pp. 150-158.

Smitheringale, W.G., 1960. Geology of Nictaux-Torbrook map-area, Annapolis and Kings counties, Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 60-13, 32 p.

Taylor, F.C., 1965. Silurian stratigraphy and Ordovician-Silurian relationships in southwestern Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 64-13, 24 p.