Ancient seas and sandstone deposits in KY.

Many sandstone rock faces can be seen along the roadside in TN and KY. Making me think that I'm at the bottom of an ocean billions of years in the past!

Kentucky designated the brachiopod as its official state fossil in 1986. Brachiopods are marine invertebrates with two dissimilar shells.  They are very common in Paleozoic strata (especially in Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and Mississippian rocks in Kentucky).  Shells may be replaced with either calcite or quartz.  Generally, the fossils are less than two inches in width.  Brachiopods are fossil shells, from animals that lived in ancient seas.  Most are now extinct.  Although they resemble clams, brachiopods were a different group of animals.  Hundreds of different types of brachiopods can be found in Kentucky.  Modern brachiopods live in the sea.  Accordingly, because brachiopods can be found in rocks throughout Kentucky, we know that an ocean once covered the area now known as Kentucky.

For more visit: http://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils