It's weird to think that no dinosaurs ever walked in Washington State. The single theropod thigh bone that was found in the San Juan Islands likely came from somewhere near California. The entire state is post-dinosaurs
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Isn't it amazing? I spent 2012-2014 taking all the geology classes available at night at the JuCo where I lived, I love that stuff. I may have to take more, I can't remember all the rocks and minerals I learned about.
jul 6, 2025, 3:20 am • 3 0 • view
I've never taken any classes but I'd love too, I don't know nearly enough. I just became obsessed with the story of it all a few years and couldn't stop looking into it, lol. It's all so fascinating
jul 6, 2025, 3:46 am • 1 0 • view
Sounds gneiss
jul 6, 2025, 3:44 am • 2 0 • view
The entire state was underwater when dinosaurs lived. Only Spokane was even on the North American plate at that point. 30 million years of plates crashing into Spokane before the Cascades start forming about 40 million years ago
jul 5, 2025, 11:54 pm • 8 0 • view
10-15 million years ago things start to heat up and the the Cascade volcanos start forming (Mt St Helens is only 4000 yo) as the future Yellowstone caldera also behind spewing incomprehensibly large amounts of lava, burying most of eastern Washington and rerouting the Columbia River.
jul 5, 2025, 11:58 pm • 6 0 • view
There are places in eastern Washington where the basalt is more than a mile thick. The flows made it from Idaho to the Pacific. And then 12000 years ago, some of the biggest floods the world has ever seen rip through the state when Glacial Lake Missoula ice dam breaks.
jul 6, 2025, 12:12 am • 6 0 • view
The water over Spokane was 500 feet deep at times. The entire area is filled with massive Canadian boulders dropped off in the floodwaters. One of them has a prominent position in Riverfront Park None of this last bit has anything to do with dinosaurs anymore but it sure is fun.
jul 6, 2025, 12:16 am • 9 0 • view
If any of this interested you, check out Professor Nick Zentner on YouTube who does an incredible job explaining all this in layman's terms. Here's a video on the Palouse Falls, that gives an amazing sense of the power involved here Plus he has an awesome bowtie. youtu.be/bhXVdDoxA94?...
jul 6, 2025, 4:09 pm • 5 1 • view
Those massive, visible layers behind him are individual lava flows! That's the scale we're dealing with here. Palouse fall drops nearly 200 feet, and not only did the water carve that gully, it filled it up and cascaded into another canyon entirely.
jul 6, 2025, 4:15 pm • 4 0 • view
yeaaaah I had this convo in the fossil lab yesterday its so sad, theres plant fossils and mb you get some mammals but yeah. I still may go out to Stonerose, I wanna go hunt crab concretions on the penninsula too.
jul 8, 2025, 3:38 pm • 2 0 • view
I find it all so endlessly fascinating. And I love how the history is just sitting on the surface, ready for everybody to see if they the know what to look at.
jul 8, 2025, 4:10 pm • 0 0 • view