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Researchers Unearth Ancient Tropical World Underneath Illinois

Illinois wasn’t always farmland. New research reveals a lost tropical world of swamps, rivers and seas frozen in the fossils of the Mazon Creek bed.

By Jenn Jordan • just now

Fossils Prove Illinois Used To Be Tropical

More than 300 million years ago, Illinois was a very different place. Instead of cornfields and prairies, the land lay in the tropics, teeming with swamps, rivers and shallow seas.

Today, that ancient world is preserved in the world-renowned Mazon Creek fossil beds, where researchers recently reexamined a massive collection of more than 300,000 fossils and uncovered a breakthrough. It turns out the area (near modern-day Coal City, Illinois) once hosted three distinct ecosys

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