Paleontology in Georgia (U.S. state)

Although no major Paleozoic discoveries have been uncovered in Georgia, the local fossil record documents a great diversity of ancient life in the state.

During the Carboniferous local sea levels dropped and a vast complex of richly vegetated delta formed in the state.

Southern Georgia remained submerged by shallow seawater into the ensuing Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era.

By the Pleistocene the state was mostly dry land covered in forests and grasslands home to mammoths and giant ground sloths.

[1] Although no major discoveries have been uncovered in Georgian Paleozoic the fossil record documents a great diversity of ancient life in the state.

The richly vegetated swamps that grew across these deltas in the northwestern part of the state left behind great coal beds.

[6] Southern Georgia remained submerged by shallow seawater into the ensuing Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era.

Local sea levels rose and fell significantly in time with the expansion and thawing of glaciers farther north in the continent.

[3] These discoveries frequently occur when the excavation of coal mines removes the rock underlying the trackway, leaving it exposed on the tunnel's ceiling.

[8] In the fall of 1963, Warren Moore and his family discovered some fossil bones and molluscs in a limestone quarry at Ladds, in Bartow County.

The Moores themselves remained very active participants in uncovering the fossils, among others like local public school teachers, and the staff and students of Shorter College.

A notable discovery was a new kind of large fossil chipmunk called Tamias aristus, which is related to a previously documented Georgian species.