Excerpt from The Story of Indiana

A hundred million years ago, so we are told by those who know, the country of which Indiana is a part was dry land, with rivers flowing over it to some distant sea. Then there came a change. The land began to sink and in time all of that country was covered with sea water. Had you lived in those far-away days, you could have sailed in a ship on a dreary, silent sea above Indiana and her sister states and have seen no dry land. Had you stopped to drag a seine through the sea water or to dive to the sea bed, you would have found several kinds of little shell-covered sea animals, some with many sharp spines, some resembling the cray-fish, but you could have found no fish, because the day of the fish had not yet arrived.

The clock of time ticked off the years by thousands and even millions, and all the while great changes were occurring in Indiana. The sea bottom began to rise and continued doing so until a large portion of what is now the eastern part of our state was dry' land - a large, low island in a wide, shallow sea. One could have gone dry shod over the country where Cincinnati, Richmond, Muncie, and Logansport now stand, but the northern and the southwestern parts of the states were still under water. The land became green with vegetation, but plants of the fern and moss variety were the only ones to be found, for Nature had not yet invented trees like our oak, maple and elm, or plants that produce flowers and fruit. Grass hoppers, crickets and may-flies might have been seen, but there were no birds, frogs, and large animals. In the sea were corals and shelled animals but above them darted a wonderful new form of life. It was the fish, a great im provement over the shelled animals, for it was long and slender, was clad with a pliable covering of scale-like skin and had fins that enabled it to dart through the water.

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