Missouri Mountain Shale

The Missouri Mountain Shale is a Silurian geologic formation in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma in the United States. First described in 1892, this unit was not named until 1909 by Albert Homer Purdue in his study of the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. Purdue assigned the Missouri Mountains in Polk and Montgomery counties, Arkansas as the type locality, but did not designate a stratotype. As of 2017, a reference section for this unit has yet to be designated.