Duricrusts and deep-weathering profiles in southwestern wisconsin.

Numerous exposures in southwestern Wisconsin display the profiles of relict deep weathering. Crusts are mainly siliceous, but many are ferruginized to some extent. The occurrence of blocky silcrete, thought to be reported for the first time, recalls the profiles in the Australian belt of transition from silcrust to ferricrust. The humid-tropical kind of pedogenesis necessary to effect this transition may have operated as late as the mid-Miocene. In some localities, the action of grotndwater has caused crusting, mottling, and reduction beneath the dolomite low surface moisture.