The geologic history of the construction of the North American continent is revealed through the rocks and landscapes of the upper Mississippi valley and the western superior basin.  From some of the oldest rocks in the continent, through the aborted rifting of the continental crust, the region’s first 3-billion-year history is a story of periodic dramatic upheaval and leveling of the Precambrian crust. The story continues through the last 550 million years of geologic time, with periodic flooding and retreat of vast seas atop the Precambrian crust, and deposition of a widespread blanket of sedimentary rocks, which has only been mildly deformed. A great diversity of marine fossils is preserved in these deposits, and great reservoirs of groundwater are stored in the sandstone and carbonate aquifers. During the past 1.8 million years, great sheets of ice advanced southward from Canada to sweep clean and expose the basement rocks of the Lake Superior region, and to deposit several hundred feet of glacial deposits elsewhere. This glacial drift has become the source of the rich soils that nurture the region’s agriculture.

Click here to preview The Geology of Upper Mississippi Valley and the Superior Basin

About the Author

Jim Meyers is a professor in the Department of Geoscience at Winona State University, Winona, Minnesota.  He earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University, where he focused his studies on sedimentary petrology, stratigraphy, geomorphology and geochemistry.  His research deals with the sedimentary petrology, sedimentology and stratigraphy of siliciclastic and carbonate rocks in Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming.  Jim  has extensive experience as a field geologist, and from 1975-2000 he was a member of the teaching faculty Indiana University’s Judson Mead Geological Field Station in southwestern Montana.  He has taught in Minnesota for the past twenty-seven years and has become well acquainted with many aspects of the geology of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Western Superior Basin.

Jim Miller, Jr. is a geologist with the Minnesota Geological Survey and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.  He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and  is an expert on the geology of the mid-continent rift.  Another major focus of Jim’s work with the MGS involves educational outreach and leading field trips in an attempt to introduce Minnesota geology to non-geologists.

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ISBN-10: 1-4266-2630-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-4266-2630-2

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