How Subduction Built the Rockies - Burgess Shale to the Rio Grande Rift

Marine fossils on a mountaintop. Granite hearts rising far from any plate boundary. A rift that might one day split a continent. The Rockies are hiding a bigger story than their peaks reveal. Journey from Burgess Shale on Mount Stephen to Red Rocks in Denver as geologists Kirk Johnson, John Geisman, Ben Gadd, and Karl Kahlström trace how low-angle subduction shoved an ancient seafloor skyward, stacked thrust faults like pages of a book, and lifted billion-year-old granite into the light. See how a thin ash layer from the dinosaur-killing asteroid pins down the timing, why helium-3 bubbles in New Mexico hot springs matter, and what a 71 km lava flow says about a still-restless mantle. Then step onto the Rio Grande Rift, where GPS stations track 1.5 to 2 mm of widening each year and erosion wars with uplift for the Rockies’ future. Are the Rockies still growing? Could North America someday tear into two? Watch to see how the clues fit together and what scientists think comes next. #RockyMountains #BurgessShale #Subduction #RioGrandeRift #Geology #Erosion #Granite #NakedScience