Depositional environment The
depositional environment of the Kope was shallow marine. The central North American continent was a tropical
epeiric sea at the time. Jennette and Pryor (1993) interpret the Kope, along with the
Bellevue and
Fairview Formations, as a progradational succession on a carbonate ramp. The Kope is the most distal facies of the ramp complex.
Notable outcrops The type section of the Grand Avenue Member is a cliff to the west of Grand Avenue in
Cincinnati,
Hamilton County, Ohio. The type section of the Wesselman Tongue of the Kope Formation is an east-facing embankment on an unnamed creek that is followed by Wesselman Road in
Miami Township, Hamilton County, Ohio. The embankment is south of Zion Hill bridge. The trilobites such as
Triarthrus eatoni,
Cryptolithus tessellatus, and
Proetidella parviusculus have been identified in the Kope, and the
Ohio State Fossil,
Isotelus maximus, can most likely be found in it. The bryozoans
Ceramophylla sp.,
Eridotrypa mutabilis,
Peronopera vera,
Batostoma jamesi,
Dekayia aspera,
Heterotrypa ulrichi,
Parvohallopora sp., and
Amplexopora septosa have been found in the Kope. Among echinoderms, the crinoids
Cincinnaticrinus varibrachialis,
Ectenocrinus sp., and
Iocrinus sp. are present in the Kope. Edrioasteroids and asteroids (starfish), generally rare, are common in overlying formations, and may be present in the Kope. A very large and unusual fossil, informally named "Godzillus", was discovered in the Kope Formation of
Kenton County, Kentucky in 2011 by amateur paleontologist Ron Fine, of the Cincinnati Dry Dredgers. The reassembled fossil had a roughly elliptical shape with multiple lobes totaling almost in length and is believed by Fine to have been nine feet-tall () when upright. David L. Meyer, of the
University of Cincinnati geology department, believed it to be a fossilized
mat of algae. In 2016, Ron Fine, David L. Meyer, and two other scientists published a study implicating that the fossil might not be a new taxon and could instead have been a complex preservation of
trilobites. == Age ==