A Our watery past in ridges dunes and fossil stands for the Ancient Shores that lie beneath our places
is everywhere fossil traces shores places
For most of its history what is now Manitoba has been under water and ice Four hundred and fifty million years ago a vast warm sea covered much of the area The sea eventually drained Then twenty thousand years ago during the most recent Ice Age the land was buried under a massive ice sheet three kilo metres deep in places As the ice melted and retreated it pulverized bedrock plopped boulders in odd places carved giant potholes in the soil and created a 1 100 kilometre by 320 kilometre lake known as Lake Agassiz Lake Agassiz eventually drained and disappeared but signs of Manitoba's watery origins are everywhere Ridges and sand dunes mark places where shorelines and deltas once existed and fossils of extinct sea creatures are plentiful Manitoba is crisscrossed by rivers many of them formed as the ice sheet melted There are over 100 000 lakes too and the largest of these Lakes Manitoba Winnipeg and Winnipegosis are direct descendents of Lake Agassiz
