A 750 Million Year Look Back At Kalamazoo

Ever wonder what life was like here in Southwest Michigan millions of years ago? It's something I think about all the time. My inner kid always gets really excited every time I hear diggers discover a woolly mammoth skeleton when doing construction projects. Sadly, No dinosaur fossils are known to have been discovered or preserved in Michigan, as there aren't any surface rocks of the right age to preserve them. But that doesn't mean they weren't here.

In fact, the area known as Kalamazoo was inhabited as far back as 750 million years ago, but it sure looked a lot different back then. Thankfully with the power of science and google we can actually take a look back at what Kalamazoo and earth looked like way back then and through the ages. A new interactive map named Ancient Earth Globe allows users to research what any area of the world might have looked like at a given point in prehistoric times. Simplemost explains that Paleontologist Ian Webster used Experiments with Google, which are browser-based projects with interactive art, technology, design and culture.

So what has Kalamazoo looked like through the ages and who was here? Well I'll tell ya, it looked a heck of a lot different. What is now known as Kalamazoo once belonged to a very different kind of looking place, as continents were merging into different worlds back then. Let's take a look: