A Time Machine Tour was originally published in the BFEC Newsletter, Vol. 16/No. 4, Fall 2012.
Fossil records of dinosaurs have not shown up in Ohio, but we did have bus-sized, fanged fish swimming in our prehistoric ocean. Not bad.
Change is the surest of all sure things. It comes countless times in the beat of a hummingbird's wing. Change is so constant that it's sometimes hard to keep track of where a thing was yesterday, so focused are we on where it's likely to be tomorrow. And that's where change can cost us — when it robs us of our ability to place today in the context of yesterday. Every now and again it's important to hop in the time machine and retrace our steps.
Looking outside today, you might be surprised to learn that Ohio is in better shape than it's been in a very long time. As early land claims often involved razing and incinerating anything taller than a blade of grass, European colonization and expansion didn't do much for our historic wildlife or habitat.
In 1800, three years before the first white settlers floated down the Kokosing to arrive in Knox County, modern estimates carpet Ohio with 95 percent forest cover. Within a hundred years, that figure would be closer to 10 percent. In 1803, when Ohio became a state, the last known Ohio bison was killed and progress dug in its heels for the betterment of all on two legs. Provided they were white and European.
Today over 30 percent of the state is covered by forest and many animal populations driven down or away have begun to recover. But what happened before all of that? Before us? During the untrammeled times that pre-date our ability to protect or destroy? How did Gambier get to be Gambier? Not in name but in place itself. Well, power up the flux capacitor and let's have a look.
As Precambrian Gambier cools and igneous and metamorphic rock set up a foundation for things to come, we get the sense that we've added too many zeros somewhere on the time machine.
Time-lapse forward: clouds drift above a vast coastal plain that will someday become the Buckeye State. Seas flow over bedrock depositing sand, mud and other sediments. The waters recede and return, recede and return; the deposits harden and settle.
When the seas are present, different life forms float and scuttle about. Algae and trilobites give way to fish and creatures of increasing complexity. The cycle of ebb and flow continues. Millions of years pass as you watch Gambier become coastal... then submerged... coastal.. then submerged.
Waking up in Gambier in the Late Devonian, you will want to hold your breath and swim for the light. Rather quickly if you please. Follow the bubbles and do your best to avoid provoking the errant dunkleosteus that some sleepy, BBC-indoctrinated synapse may remind you is "hyper-carnivorous."
As you break the surface, drink in the fresh sea air and allow the dance of sunlight on water to put bone-fanged mega predators out of your mind. Welcome to the BFEC circa three hundred and seventy million years ago!
At this point in pre-history, Ohio has transitioned from lying beneath a clear, shallow sea to lying beneath a relatively deep and stagnant sea. The BFEC is probably amongst the mud you freed yourself from on your dash to the surface. That thick, black mud, comprised chiefly of organic matter drifting down from livelier waters above, is part of an anoxic zone that has changed the seafloor from a hopping invertebrate jamboree into something of a sludgy wasteland. While plankton flourishes and the "age of the fish" is exploding near the surface, life cannot exist just now in the oxygen-free abyss in which Gambier is mired.
Treading water, two more periods (Carboniferous and Permian) pass Gambier before the sea gradually drains and the land uplifts 250 million years ago. While the Gambier Yacht Club's days are done until they build Apple Valley Lake, sandstone and shale (formed from sea floor deposits) and high levels of silicon and carbonate in the soil still whisper of our maritime history to this day.
Let's take the time machine up to safer altitudes for a while... The groundwork for our major geologic features begins to take shape through the drainage action of the sprawling Teays River and its tributaries. Viewed from above, the Teays River System flows from the Appalachian Mountains north and west across Ohio, carving valleys throughout the Appalachian Plateau on which Gambier sits. The basic shape of some of these valleys might strike you as familiar.
In time (around 2.5 to 3 million years ago), glaciers begin their advance from the north. As mighty as the mother-river of the Ohio and Kanawha is, it cannot withstand the steady encroachment of continent-wide ice sheets and their melt waters. The Teays' drainage patterns are splintered along with much of Ohio's surface topography.
As time continues to flow, we can see our corner of Ohio covered by two major glaciers. The Illinoisan slides down about 250,000-300,000 years ago and the Wisconsin follows in the neighborhood of 15-20,000 years ago. Both will leave a mark.
Deposits left by the Illinoisan glacier will have a major influence on the types of plant communities growing on the BFEC preserve. The thing about a sheet of ice the size of several states is that it can carry a rather large amount of rock along with it. Much of this rock is ground into small particles that will be deposited in valleys when the glacier retreats. Most of these deposits contain limestone and will give rise to the fertile soils we have today.
The various communities found at the BFEC reflect the relative fertility of the different soil types and their ability to hold moisture. In riparian (or river-side) areas the communities are dominated by sycamore, silver maple, willow, cottonwood and green ash, species that are capable of tolerating frequent disturbance and waterlogged soil with little oxygen. Pockets of undisturbed glacial till are more fertile and support beeches and maples. In areas with high levels of sand and gravel, such as along Wolf Run, ash and tulip poplar can be found. In dry upland areas oak and hickory are more common.
The topography left by the retreat of glaciers is by and large the topography we see outside our windows in the 21st century. Looking back at the area around Pleistocene Gambier, you can observe glacial melt waters eroding the local plateau and creating a valley along the Kokosing.
Nearby, piles of glacial till block other streams and lead to the development of lakes. North of Mount Vernon, a gravel ridge forms and creates a large body of water known as Green Valley Lake. Picturesque but fleeting. As gravel dams are want to do, ours inevitably fails and a wave slams through the Kokosing valley pushing gravel as far as Millwood. That gravel is still being trucked around to construction sites and township roads all over the region.
As the glaciers wind up their farewell tour of central Ohio, it's a great time to do some wildlife watching. Towards the end of the Pleistocene (around 10,000-13,000 years ago), Ohio features many of the mammals that you might still find today: skunks, otters, woodchucks, muskrats, mice, voles, bats, fox, weasels and minks to name more than a few.
There are also species that we don't see as much anymore: herds of woolly mammoth roam the countryside, grazing a landscape not so different from our own. Here and there other ice-age behemoths: musk ox, elk and bison; even giant ground sloth and peccaries migrating up from the south. Giant Beavers are a staple in Ohio's ancient waterways. From a safe distance keep your eyes peeled for the massive short-faced bear, a dire wolf or saber-toothed cat.
Then in the distance another animal wanders into the picture. A group of them actually, having made their way from so far west they call it east. With the coming of the first paleo-Indians and the end of the ice age, surface-level change is about to get supercharged. But that's a story for another time.
See the original newsletter (PDF) for: "An (Unofficial) Timeline of Gambier Through the Pre-Ages."