Laramie, Wyoming, is dinosaur country! The only one I actually saw was this one, at the Geology Department building on the University of Wyoming campus. But I'm sure there were others lurking nearby, at least in spirit.

Wyoming is a geologic wonderland: dinosaur bones, seashells embedded in rock 7000' above sea level, mountain ranges which have scooted 40 miles east on top of the land, oil and gas and other minerals, mountain ranges sitting on top of other mountain ranges, and on and on.

Many of the buildings in Laramie, including the cathedral pictured below, were constructed of this brown limestone which contains seashells. The quarry is north of town, at about 7000' elevation. So of course the question is, how did those seashells get inside that rock? Either the sea was up here, or the quarry was down there, at some time or other.

John McPhee, in his book Annals of the Former Earth, tells of David Love, a world-famous geologist of Laramie, who taught Sunday school in this cathedral. One day he took the kids outside to show them the seashells in the rock the church is built of, and explained to them how that rock had once been mud at the bottom of the sea, and how forces within the earth caused the mud to solidify and then lift up thousands of feet, and of course that this took millions of years to occur (and is indeed still occurring).

The church Board was outraged that the children were being shown scientific evidence rather than told legend from the distant past, and wouldn't allow Dr. Love to teach Sunday school there anymore.*

The bottom photo shows what I believe to be seashells in the rock of the church--those little white spots. I couldn't get close enough to the building to get a really definitive shot. (The seashells are there; I'm just not sure they are in my photo.)

*McPhee, John. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1998. Page 328.

Photos and text ©D.L. Mark 2002

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