It is primarily composed of mottled white, yellow, and dark grey chert, and is separated from the underlying Oriskany Sandstone by an unconformity.
[1] The Huntersville Chert is laterally equivalent to the Needmore Shale, which lies north of the New River.
The darker chert is heavily fractured and contains impurities such as glauconite pellets, silty and argillaceous grains, organic material, or dolomite and calcite crystals.
[3] Aeolian dust blowing in from hot, dry areas may also be responsible for some of the silica forming the chert.
[2] The uppermost layers of the Huntersville Chert are glauconitic sandstones rich in shells of spiriferid brachiopods.