Taff introduced the McAlester Formation name in his study of the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma.
[2] The name was introduced into Arkansas in 1907 as the McAlester Group, where it consisted of the formations known as the Spadra Shale, the Fort Smith Formation, and the Paris Shale.
[6] These formations was redefined and replaced in 1960, when the McAlester Shale replaced the Spadra Shale and the lower Fort Smith Formation.
[7] The McAlester Formation is informally recognized with three sub-units in Arkansas: the Lower and Upper Hartshorne coal beds,[1] and the McAlester coal bed.
This article about a specific stratigraphic formation in the United States is a stub.