The Origin Of Connecticut’s Unique Shoreline

NEW HAVEN — In 1961 New Haven schoolboy Christopher Self brought to the Yale Peabody Museum for identification a specimen he had found on Prospect Beach in West Haven. Nothing like it had been found before in Connecticut.

Mr Self’s find turned out to be a 5,000-year-old fossil (the quohog, Mercenaria mercenaria) that, with hundreds subsequently collected, helps tell the story of how the Atlantic Ocean reentered the Long Island Sound when the glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age.

Former Connecticut State Geologist Ralph Lewis will elaborate on this find, featured in a new exhibit at the Peabody, in a talk at Yale Peabody Museum on Wednesday, April 21, at 4 pm. He will also explain how plate tectonics, glaciers, sea level rise, tidal currents and the formation of tidal marshes all played a role in shaping the Long Island Sound basin and in creating the longest stretch of low-energy, rock-dominated shoreline on the American East Coast.

The talk, “Connecticut’s Unique Shoreline and the Geologic History of Long Island Sound,” is free and open to the public. It will be presented in the third floor Peabody auditorium, 170 Whitney Avenue in New Haven.

For further information visit www.Peabody.yale.edu/events or call 203-432-5050.