As Ian swung a pickax into the mudstone, Dane attempted to roll a cigarette between gusts. Loose tobacco flew from the paper. “Doggone it,” he said, and tried again. Along with Scott Sampson ...
The Upper Jurassic-aged Haynesville Shale formation is a dark organic-rich, brittle (conducive to hydraulic fracing) mudstone-shale that lies between the Bossier and Cotton Valley Lime intervals.
It takes the form of some truly ancient, charred remnants trapped in some truly ancient mudstone. And by ancient we're talking 430 million years ago, during the Silurian Period of Earth history.