What are the Finger Lakes?
Millions of years ago the northern portion of the Finger Lakes region was a tropical, salt water sea. Over time, mud, sand, vegetation, and dead shelled creatures became deposits of shales, limestone, sandstone, and dolomite. If you look closely at the exposed sedimentary layers of the region you can often find fossils of trilobites, bryozoas, corals, crinoids, brachiopods, and mullosks. (One of the best places to find these fossils is at Portland Point on the east side of Cayuga Lake near Lansing where more than a hundred species can be found in shale along the roadside.) When the sea receded, 24 parallel north-south river valleys were created. Later dinosaurs roamed this region, but they too died out. More recently, about a million years ago, a great freeze came down from the north. Enormous glaciers thought to have been a mile or more thick covered the region. Then they receded. This happened several times. Each time the glaciers proceeded southward, they scoured the land. When the
