Journey into the Michigan Basin
Wall of Time | Photos courtesy of Carolina Bomanite Corporation
Journey into the Michigan Basin
How old is considered “old”?
Appreciating scale and time are among the fundamental challenges involved with understanding the diverse set of processes that have taken place throughout Earth history in any geographic region on our planet. The Michigan Basin is no different. It is a bowl-shaped basin encompassing much of the Great Lakes region. It contains a sedimentary rock record where up to 5 km (16,000 ft) of strata were deposited during nearly 240 million years.
We now have an opportunity to bring those pieces of history up from below, and to relate the scale of the time it has taken to deposit all of that rock. The Michigan Wall of Time will be an aesthetic outdoor space that serves as a unique public draw and will provide a useful service (and pedagogical boost) to our on-campus / online courses, as well as museum visitors. The display will be a curved wall built entirely out of large stacked segments of Michigan rock (7 – 9 feet high). The stacks of rock will represent a sequential progression of the major formations within the Michigan Basin, displaying a dip along the walkway, allowing one to proceed deeper into the basin as you move down the natural gradient behind Dinosaur Park.
Costs
The Michigan Wall of Time will be located outside Rood Hall, adjacent to Dinosaur Park, and will require an anticipated total budget of $100,000 to complete the design, construction, and maintenance phases of this project.
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