Take a close look at pyrite, fossils found in Longmont, and crude oil and try to draw connections between each of these objects and their possible histories.

Share what you understand about how different types of rocks form, break down, and transform —and how these processes help us piece together Earth’s history.

Model the history of a special kind of marble only found in Colorado that was used to help build the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and explain what might happen to this marble in the distant future.

Explore how processes that unfold over millions of years, shape our everyday lives by uncovering the hidden geologic stories behind familiar objects and considering how those materials may continue to transform far into the future.

Long before the first hands struck stone against stone, the Earth was shaping its own treasures. In the crush of heat and pressure, in the slow churning of mantle and crust, minerals formed—crystals growing grain by grain, metals bound deep in rock. They traveled upward through volcanic fire, settled in seams, or were ground into sand by the patient work of water and wind. Every element, every fleck of ore, was the outcome of an ancient, restless planet.

Over eons, these raw materials drifted, collided, and reshaped themselves. Some became the bones of mountains, others the dust of plains. When humans arrived, we learned to dig, to pry, to melt, to forge. Copper wound itself into wires carrying our voices, iron became the skeletons of our cities, rare minerals became the beating hearts of our machines.

But each hole in the ground leaves a mark. Whole hills are cut away; rivers run clouded with tailings; communities bend beneath the weight of industry. The minerals beneath our feet are finite, their formation far beyond the scale of human history. What we take in decades was made over lifetimes of the Earth itself. And while our hunger for them has built the world we know, it has also carved deep scars into the one we depend on.