[TheLurkerX]

I didn't either. My friend and I were talking about the fossils we find in his creek gravel in the hills of central KY. They're old, old looking sea shells, and other marine fossils that look like they've been embedded for forever and a day. We were hypothesizing that they were maybe brought there by tsunami or something, but this would make sense.

Does anyone know if they have an estimate for how far inland the waves came?

[Hunble]

No tsunami is needed and your answer was implied with your original question.

hills of central KY

Hills are formed then the ground is uplifted by geological forces. What you see today as hills were once the floor of an ocean.

[DuncanWaring]

Does anyone know if they have an estimate for how far inland the waves came?

Ditto on the uplifted seafloor answer.

I've seen fossilized seashells in the rock up around 8000 ft. of elevation in the mountains east of Salt Lake City.

[muawiyah]

The formation you are referring to in KY was once ocean bottom. There are several different layers of limestone underlying Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, and Western Pennsylvania. All of the limestone was laid down during different periods in various "ocean" formations.

Best place in the world to go for the fossils was the "New Cut" on the Ohio upstream of Louisville.

Before the last glaciation (of the current Ice Age) the Ohio flowed to the East. A "new cut" was made at the end of the glaciation from the Miami river to the vicinity of Louisville, and voila, a gazillion fossils.

My understanding is the state of Indiana now prohibits digging for fossils in the area since the digs had gotten so extensive they endangered the safety of roads in the region.

[madison10]

There are seashells & fossils (trilobites) in gravel pits in northern Ohio & fields in southern Michigan (same general area). Great Lakes or early ocean?

[Renfield]

"...I didn't either. My friend and I were talking about the fossils we find in his creek gravel in the hills of central KY. They're old, old looking sea shells, and other marine fossils that look like they've been embedded for forever and a day. We were hypothesizing that they were maybe brought there by tsunami or something, but this would make sense.

Does anyone know if they have an estimate for how far inland the waves came?..."

I grew up there (in Clark County), and was a fossil hunter from a very young age; I probably have the same fossils; mostly brachiopods, a few cephalopods, some sea cucumbers, etc. They are of upper Ordovician age (meaning that they are at leat 443 million years old). These fossils have absolutely nothing to do with the Chesapeake crater.

[Miss Marple]

I would have to look at geologic maps, but what you are seeing are probably fossilized shells from the Paleozoic Era, probably Mississippian. The same thing can be found in central Indiana.

Before the time of dinosaurs, most of the Midwest was under a great inland sea, with the fairly new Appalachians sticking up as a large island, sort of like Greenland.

The fossils were deposited at that time on the botttom of a sea floor, and later buried under tons of silt and calcium carbonate, becoming beds of shale and limestone containing fossils.

My degree is in geology, and when I was a young woman I did a lot of field work in southern Indiana.