Get Geologic History Of New York State Worksheet

New York City lies within the North American plate and the closest plate boundary is thousands of miles away in the middle of the Atlantic.

Fordham gneiss, one of the oldest rock formations in the world, can be seen from Inwood Hill Park by looking across Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Named for the Bronx neighborhood where it is most visible, Fordham gneiss was formed around 1.1 billion years ago, in the pre-Cambrian era, during a period of continental shifting.

Most of Central and Western New York's geology has “layer cake stratigraphy.” The youngest rock layers in Central and Western New York are from the Devonian, mostly at high elevations. Older rocks from the Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian are found only in low-lying areas in the northern half of Upstate New York.

New York's landscape has been most recently affected by the last Ice Age, a period of time during which glaciers periodically grew and advanced south and then melted and retreated north. The last glacial advance peaked ~20,000 years ago and, during this peak, ice covered almost all of New York.

This foundation consists of the city's five bedrock layers: Fordham gneiss, found primarily in the Bronx; Manhattan schist, in Lower and northern Manhattan; the Hartland Formation, in central Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; Staten Island serpentinite, in Staten Island; and Inwood marble, in Manhattan and ...

The youngest rock in New York State dates from the late "Age of Dinosaurs." This rock underlies all of Long Island and part of Staten Island, although it is largely hidden by much younger "Ice Age" sediments and modern development.

Superposition. Sedimentary rocks are deposited one on top of another. Therefore, the youngest layers are found at the top, and the oldest layers are found at the bottom of the sequence.

The Carboniferous and Permian are missing from the local rock record. Little is known about Mesozoic New York, but during the early part of the era, carnivorous dinosaurs left behind footprints which later fossilized. The early to mid Cenozoic is also mostly absent from the local rock record.