KC, 300 Million Years Ago

Posted on by Karla Deel

Let’s blow our collective minds together and go way back to 300 million years ago.

 

Designed and Illustrated by John Babcock, for the book "Rocks and Fossils of Central United States with Special Emphasis on the Greater Kansas City Area," by Richard Gentile
Designed and Illustrated by John Babcock, for the book “Rocks and Fossils of Central United States with Special Emphasis on the Greater Kansas City Area,” by Richard Gentile

 

“Life in downtown Kansas City,” writes KU geologist Professor Richard J. Gentile, “about 300 million years ago, during the Pennsylvanian Period of Earth’s history. A shallow sea teemed with life. The skeletal remains of this vast and strange array of creatures is entombed in the layers of rock that underlie the city and its environs.”

 

Designed and Illustrated by John Babcock, for the book "Rocks and Fossils of Central United States with Special Emphasis on the Greater Kansas City Area," by Richard Gentile
Designed and Illustrated by John Babcock, for the book “Rocks and Fossils of Central United States with Special Emphasis on the Greater Kansas City Area,” by Richard Gentile

 

Pleistocene fossils from 2.6 million years ago–when continental glaciers and seas covered downtown Kansas City and the drifting ice lobes had started to form the course of the Missouri River–suggest that many large animals existed here, including mastodons, bison, ground sloths, camels, mammoths, musk oxen and beavers.