Ducks float in a small pond beside layers of limestone that once formed a Devonian sea floor. Half a million in donations were collected and, with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, the park was dedicated in 2001 - complete with an entry plaza, biostrome plaza, handicap accessible walkway, 20 educational “discovery points” marked by hexagonal signs within the gorge, and other park features - making it the perfect (free) field trip for families and local elementary classrooms. Because locals and out-of-staters were so enticed by a 375-million-year-old limestone sea floor in one of the most comically landlocked states, a committee was formed to develop it into a tourist attraction. Evidence of these extinct seas can be found in parts of England, Belgium, New England and the Midwest.įossil Gorge fascinated the public as soon as it opened on Labor Day weekend in 1993, attracting tens of thousands of visitors a day. But for much of the period, Laurussia was home to inland seas, typically clear, warm and shallow. The period finally ended 360 million years ago with the start of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age, which gave way to Pangea, mountain ranges, deserts and dino-palooza. Emma McClatchey/Little Villageĭuring the Devonian, most of North America and Europe formed a south-of-the-equator continent called Laurussia, which gradually shifted north and rotated counterclockwise (ruffling Earth’s tectonic feathers in the process). It’s not (too) hard to spot fossilized coral in the limestone at Fossil Gorge. Earth’s first forests began sucking up carbon, depositing it into the ground. The weather was warm and arid, the land glacierless. Sea levels were high during the Devonian. The period lasted 60 million years, beginning roughly 420 million years ago. The Devonian age isn’t as action-packed as the more recent Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, which saw many-ton dinosaurs and scrappy mammaliaforms battle for survival amid massive volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes. In fact, it was the first of these floods in 1993 that breached the 712-foot spillway and inundated the campground below, washing away many centuries of concrete, soil and sediment to reveal a geological treasure trove - stones and fossils dating back more than 350 million years to the Devonian age, when this land was covered by a shallow sea. It’s not the dam that’s old, though it has survived almost seven decades and two near-apocalyptic floods. You want to see something old, head to the Coralville Dam. Visitors are free to stroll anywhere in Fossil Gorge, which sits in the shadow of the Coralville Spillway.
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