About
On the Same Sage This project was created to explore the geology and history of the Great Plains region, as well as geology, paleontology, and other topics in general. It will cover topics in deep time, hundreds of millions of years ago, as well as topics in the 19th and 20th century to today. This… Continue reading About
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
The settlement of the Great Plains would never have happened so quickly, if not for a few key figures. Among them was Ferdinand Hayden, a theologist and surgeon by training, but a naturalist and geologist at heart. Hayden was born in Massachusetts, but a troubled childhood—an alcoholic father and an abandoning mother who were unmarried—led… Continue reading Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
Plants, at the Moment
The ecosystems of the Great Plains are relatively young, at least, in comparison with other regions in North America. It follows that a stretch of land that was so controversial would have an interesting coverage of flora. The Great American Desert is nothing like the stereotypical sandy wasteland that might come to mind. Almost 3,000… Continue reading Plants, at the Moment
Animals, at the Moment
We’ve heard about Precambrian life, the coral reefs of the Cretaceous Interior Seaway, and the mammoth and his friends of the Miocene. What lives on the Great Plains today? Agriculture and the development that comes with human settlement has played a large role in the ecology of the plains. Introduction of new species and the… Continue reading Animals, at the Moment
Rain Follows the Plow
The number of humans on Earth has septupled in the last 130 years, and the population continues to increase exponentially. It won’t be long before there are more people than the planet can handle. Back in the mid-1800s, however, this wasn’t so much of an issue. The number of people in the New World was… Continue reading Rain Follows the Plow
Humans, the Short End of the Time Scale
The long-winded history of the Great Plains is recorded in the geological features we see today. The Precambrian shows itself in outcrops of the pink Town Mountain granite, the Packsaddle schist and Valley Springs gneiss. These rocks tell a story of massive chambers of boiling-hot magma being pushed to the surface to cool, and surrounding… Continue reading Humans, the Short End of the Time Scale
Miocene and Mammoths
Ever wonder what it’s like to meet a mammoth? It was possible—only a few tens of thousands of years ago on the Great Plains. We call this epoch in time the Pleistocene, spanning from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. In the span of geologic time, this is a miniscule segment in the history of… Continue reading Miocene and Mammoths
Clean Burning Coal
When studying coal formation, origins usually point to the Carboniferous period in geologic history, 359-299 million years ago. Shallow inland seas, like the Western Interior Seaway discussed in the last post, were intermixed with thick trees and plant life, creating the perfect swampy wetlands where coal is formed. Decaying plant matter, buried and squeezed by… Continue reading Clean Burning Coal
The Cretaceous Interior Seaway
Jurassic Park helped to give dinosaurs their fame, but this really wasn’t when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. The Cretaceous period, starting about 145 million years ago, was the real heyday of our giant mesothermic friends (most dinosaurs were not ectothermic, or cold-blooded!). Until their extinction around 66 million years ago, dinosaurs were spread across the… Continue reading The Cretaceous Interior Seaway
Early History—Plains Evolution
The Earth formed with misty beginnings—most of its history is lumped into a section of time called the Precambrian. The Precambrian includes both the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which span from the formation of Earth about 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Phanerozoic eon 541 million years ago. The first signs of… Continue reading Early History—Plains Evolution
The Great American Desert
What exactly are the Great Plains? Everyone has heard the name, at least in a history class at some point. Definitions of the region have changed over time, and continue to be murky even today. Officially, the Great Plains cover parts of 10 U.S. states, the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and bits of… Continue reading The Great American Desert
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