Hamilton Quarry is a Late Carboniferouslagerstätte near Hamilton, Kansas, United States. It has a diverse assemblage of unusually well-preserved marine, euryhaline, freshwater, flying, and terrestrial fossils (invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants).[1] The habitat of some of these faunal elements, as for anamniotic stegocephalians, is debated; although some of these have traditionally been interpreted as freshwater inhabitants,[2] some may have been euryhaline.[3][4] This extraordinary mix of fossils suggests it was once an estuary.[5] This type of Lagerstätte is considered a Konservat-Lagerstätte (or conservation lagerstätte), due to the quality the preservation of soft tissue (skin preservation).
The lagerstätte occurs within a paleovalley that was incised into the surrounding Carboniferous cyclothemic sequence during a time of low sea level and was then filled in during a subsequent transgression. The channel has a capping series of interbedded laminated limestones and mudstones for which are designated the Lagerstätte beds or ‘vertebrate horizon’. This facies contains a well-preserved mixed assemblage of terrestrial (conifers, insects, myriapods, reptiles), freshwater (ostracods), aquatic (amphibians, reptile), brackish or euryhaline (ostracods, eurypterids, microconchids, fish), and marine (brachiopods, echinoderms) fossils.
^deBraga, Michael; Reisz, Robert R. (1995). "A new diapsid reptile from the uppermost Carboniferous (Stephanian) of Kansas". Palaeontology. 38 (1): 199-212.