Lava, Ice, and Ancient Seas: How Michigan Got Its Pictured Rocks

In Munising, Michigan, more than a dozen miles of rainbow, painted cliffs make up Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Hundreds of thousands of people visit each year, but very few learn the epic, billion-year-long story behind them. It's a story that involves everything from lava, to ancient highlands, to long-forgotten sea creatures, to mile-high glaciers and an ancestral Great Lake.

So, let's take a journey back in time. Here's what the Earth was like hundreds of millions of years ago, back when these famous cliffs were just getting started.

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Key Sources:
Some awesome overviews of Pictured Rocks geology:
https://www.nps.gov/piro/learn/nature...
https://www.nps.gov/piro/learn/nature...
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/de...
https://www.usgs.gov/science-support/...

A long read, but a great book on the geology of the area: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...

#PicturedRocks #UpperPeninsula

Midcontinent Rift/Jacobsville:
https://eos.org/features/new-insights...
https://www.nps.gov/articles/parkscie...
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/KeweenawGeoher...

Miners Castle/Chapel Rock:
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/educati...

Key Image Sources:
Old Maps: https://www.earthbyte.org/paleomap-pa...
Paleoart: http://spinops.blogspot.com/
Chapel Rock Ripples: VOICE, P.J. & HARRISON, W.B., III (2014) Paleozoic Geology of the Central Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Michigan Basin Geological Society and Michigan Geological Survey, 111 p.