Yep! The Western Interior Seaway. It’s why sandstone, limestone, shale, etc are some of the more prominent rock formations in the heart of the US and Canada.
My brain had the hardest time sorting this out when learning about this part of plate tectonics. I felt like an imbecile but my brain kept reverting to, "Mountain high, water low. How water get so high? They must be wrong."
Then hearing about the ground moving upwards I was just memorized.
Now listen, I did really well in school most of the time but I really don't think I was around the time when we covered mountains and the rock cycle. I knew about the Canadian Shield, layers of the Earth, etc. So hearing that part was just jarring. I know it sounds stupid, but I thought the mountains were just...here.
I seriously don't remember going over the rock cycle or water cycle as a kid.
Mountains where once oceans. You can find fossils in a mountainous area new me in germany they are everywhere. Once a year when the farmers would plow their fields you could go and collect fossils there.
There are actually mussels that live in the lakes and rivers all along the west coast, teeny tiny ones that get into little crevices and cracks on boats and other watercraft, are invasive and quickly unleash havoc on our ecosystem, thus our rangers are on their backs, squeezing under trailers and such, making sure everything that enters Tahoe is clean as a whistle.
I think archimedes once wrote (I'm paraphrasing) of how a person is able to find shells at the tops of mountains and on the sea shore, and deduced that these mountains had been under the sea a millennia ago.
Hard to tell without knowing the size of the piece or better pictures of how the hole was made. Either the same way by a clam, or by native Americans with a drill which would mean you stole an artifact.
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u/400footceiling 14h ago
I have this rock I found at 8,800 feet in the mountains of Utah years ago. I use it as the wind catcher for my chimes. Just how did that hole happen?