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An Ancient Sea: 550 to 250 million years ago:
Almost 600 million years ago, the sea invaded this area. It advanced and retreated many times for another 400 million years. Most of the gray rocks that you see in front of you are Paleozoic limestones and dolomites made up of remains of the countless plants and animals that once flourished in this warm, shallow sea.
The gray mountains that you see here are composed of deposits laid down on this ancient ocean floor during the course of several hundred million years.
Fossils of the algae, trilobites, crinoids, corals, brachiopods and numerous other plants and animals that lived in this sea can be found today in these gray mountains. The drawing shows a 500 million year old reef constructed by a group of fossil spongelike organisms called archaeocyaths.
The sea is gone now. The massive deposits if left behind slowly wore away under the relentless forces of rain, snow, heat and wind. From the window to the Muddy Mountains across the valley is a distance of about three miles in space, but five hundred million years in time. |