A fact from Potsdam Sandstone appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 August 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that New York's Potsdam Sandstone was deposited in rising seas and consists of sediments eroded from unvegetated terrestrial landscapes?
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Some recent changes have been made to the stratigraphy in this area. Specifically, the term Potsdam sandstone (a term that does not follow the conventions of the North American Stratigraphic Code) has been dropped in favor of Ausable or Covey Hill Formations. There is a big debate about this new nomenclature, with folks from the GSC favoring one set of terms and people from the NYS Museum favoring another. Frankly, I think that launching into this in Wikipedia would only confuse things, but it might be worth briefly mentioning the formal stratigraphic units that make up the Potsdam sandstone and referring the reader to the appropriate literature. Perhaps entries for the formal terms could be set up to redirect to the Potsdam sandstone entry. The competing nomenclature is nicely summarized in Figure 3 of Hagadorn, J. W., Collette, J. H., and Belt, E. S., 2011, Eolian-aquatic deposits and faunas of the Middle Cambrian Potsdam Group: Palaios, v. 26, no. 5, p. 314-334. I would be happy to take a stab at this over the coming weeks (plus add a few more pics showing the details of the rock itself) provided that there are no major objections. Rygel, M.C. (talk) 15:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have full-text access to that Palaios article, but I see from the abstract that it refers very specifically to the Potsdam Group. Therefore, I edited the lead and one or two places in the text to refer to this as a group and not as a formation. IMO, the article section that is currently titled "Stratigraphic equivalents and related units" would be a good place to discuss the subdivision of the group into formations. That subsection already indicates that, in Quebec, the Potsdam Group consists of the Covey Hill Formation and the Cairnside Formation, and that the Potsdam Supergroup is recognized in other regions. I think it likely that still other formation names (in addition to Covey Hill, Ausable, and Cairnside) are used for "Potsdam Group" rocks in other areas. Particularly considering that the Potsdam was one of the first lithostratigraphic units described in North America and that its name has been applied widely for other purposes, I think the topic of stratigraphic nomenclature, subdivisions, renamings, etc., deserves more attention than that section of the article currently provides. (Also, each of the individual formations could qualify for their own separate articles.) However, the early parts of the article should not confront the lay reader with the esoterica of the rules of stratigraphic nomenclature, much less the changes in those rules over time. --Orlady (talk) 17:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Further to the above, I see that as recently as 2009 -- and, indeed, earlier this year -- the Potsdam was being referred to as a "Formation," specifically in Landing, Amati, and Franz, 2009, Epeirogenic transgression near a triple junction: the oldest (latest early–middle Cambrian) marine onlap of cratonic New York and Quebec, doi: 10.1017/S0016756809006013 Geological Magazine July 2009 v. 146 no. 4 p. 552-566 and in this 2011 abstract. --Orlady (talk) 18:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
