The Coon Creek Science Center is a science center and fossil finding site at 2985 Hardin Graveyard Road in Adamsville,

McNairy County McNairy County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 26,075. Its county seat is Selmer. McNairy County is located along Tennessee's border with the state of Mississippi. Sheriff Buf ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territor ...

. The science center is situated on a property on one of the most important fossil sites in North America. The

Coon Creek Formation The Coon Creek Formation is a geologic formation located in western Tennessee and extreme northeast Mississippi. It is a sedimentary sandy marl deposit, Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) in age, about 70 million years old. The formation is known for ...

is a

geologic formation A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics ( lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock exp ...

located in western Tennessee and extreme northeast

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...

. It is a sedimentary sandy marl deposit,

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

in age, about 73 million years old. In the Late Cretaceous epoch, the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United S ...

reached further north and West Tennessee was covered by water. The

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

ization began when the water receded. Finds at the Coon Creek site range from marine shells, crabs and snails to vertebrate

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* {{authority control Museums in McNairy County, Tennessee Natural history museums in Tennessee Protected areas of McNairy County, Tennessee Education in McNairy County, Tennessee

See also

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