Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
In western Kansas, a series of
spectacular shapes burst up out of the
plains. They're called monument rocks.
And the raw material for these towering
structures was formed more than 80
million years ago by the smallest of
creatures. This this place is amazing.
I've been looking for just a few minutes
and and here's a shell. It's an oyster
shell. I've been finding these things
all over the place. And this whole place
is made of shells. There's really big
ones. There's small ones. And even the
chalk itself is made of microscopic
shells. So why are there shells here?
Answer: Kansas used to be covered by a
massive inland sea. Over time, the giant
oysters living on the seafloor were
buried by billions of tiny plankton
shells as they died and fell to the
bottom of the sea. Layer after layer
over millions of years, all that weight
compressed them into chalk. When the sea
finally drained, that chalk got left
behind. Millions of years of erosion
sculpted the chalk, leaving behind these
curious outcrops that now surge skywards
out of Kansas.
[Music]