Paleontology in Alabama
During the early Paleozoic, Alabama was at least partially covered by a sea that would end up being home to creatures including brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, and graptolites.
The sea covering southern Alabama remained in place during the early part of the Cenozoic era.
The climate cooled and the seas withdrew until the Ice Age when Alabama was home to mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths.
An episode of geologic activity called the Taconic Orogeny uplifted mountains in the state during the Late Ordovician.
Fossils from this time period are rare in Alabama because the low oxygen conditions excluded most life forms from the local waters.
[3] The Mississippian marine life of Alabama included blastoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, and crinoids.
[5] During the ensuing Pennsylvanian epoch the same sediments eroded from the mountains had formed an expansive coastal plain.
[5] The rich plant life of these swamps would be preserved in great detail and abundance in the northern part of the state.
[1] Alabama experienced rifting during the Triassic period of the Mesozoic era due to the breakup of Pangaea.
[7] When Alabama's Mooreville Chalk was deposited the area was home to protostegid turtles and the shark Cretoxyrhina mantelli, which fed on them.
Sometimes the shark's feeding activities would leave physical evidence on the turtle's bones that would be preserved when they fossilized.
[8] Other Alabama sharks included the genus Squalicorax, which also commonly left behind tooth tips embedded in the bones of animals it fed on.
[9] A type of large, freshwater turtle that lived in Cretaceous Alabama was Bothremys, which may have fed on ancient snails.
The southern part of the state included grasslands and forests with a greater variety of trees than those of northern Alabama.
[1] The process of mining Carboniferous coal to help power the Industrial Revolution has been responsible for uncovering tracks left at that time by early tetrapods in Alabama.
Such discoveries frequently occur when the excavation of coal mines removes the rock underlying the trackway, leaving it exposed on the tunnel's ceiling.
[19] USGS Professional Paper 112 listed sources of Alabama plant fossils in the vicinities of the following towns: Centerville, Cottondale, Cowikee Creek, Eufaula, Glen Allen, Havana, Mapleville, Sanders Ferry Bluff, Shirleys, Snow Plantation, Soap Hill, Tuscaloosa, and Whites Bluff.
[19] In July 1961, a fossil discovery occurred that author Marian Murray called "one of the most exciting"[21] in the state's history.
