THE ROCHESTER SHALE: A SNAPSHOT OF ANCIENT LIFE

425 million years ago, New York was a warm, shallow saltwater tropical sea. Exotic creatures lived, thrived and died in the lagoons. The formation of coral reefs was just beginning.

- Joseph J. "PaleoJoe"

Trilobites scurried across the ocean floor, crinoids and cystoids grew like flowers on the sea floor. Brachiopod seashells littered the sea floor and snails and cephalopods dined on the abundant food sources. Occasionally the sea scorpions would glide by looking for an opportunity to feast on hapless prey.

The Silurian Sea in North America would eventually stretch from Wisconsin across Canada to New York and beyond. Fossils of that era can be found along what is now described as the Niagara Escarpment which runs from Wisconsin along Lake Michigan, through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Ontario, Canada, through Niagara Falls to Rochester, New York. Remnants of the escarpment can be seen as high cliffs in various locations.

DIGGING THE ERIE CANAL

Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution. Seeking to move products from the East Coast to the Midwest and beyond, land surveys and construction began on the Erie Canal.

Laborers digging the Erie Canal between Rochester and Buffalo came across rocks with weird shapes inside them. Among those weird shapes were trilobites including Dalmanites "Butterflies of the Seas" and Arctinurus. In the 1830s paleontologist James Hall began excavating and studying the wide variety of fauna coming out of the sites. In 1930, and at various times, museums around the United States arrived to excavate and work the site including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.