61-Alabama Geology

Rocks are history frozen in time, read like a book using modern technology. Alabama has an enormous range of geologic history exposed in our rocks – from Cambrian, around 500 million years ago, through most ages in between: Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carbonaceous, up to modern Paleogene and Neogene. There is a gap on the surface where the dinosaur-age rocks (Triassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary) are mostly buried deep. This talk will describe the ages of these rocks, their locations and how they got there, plus their fossil and mineral compositions. We will explore the tools used to make these determinations. And, we will explain the commercial uses of Alabama rocks.