EcoWatch: Millions of years ago, shallow oceans covered big swaths of North America. The bottoms of these ancient seas became cemeteries for sea lilies, squid and diatoms. In this oxygen-poor environment, these creatures turned into drops of oil or bubbles of methane.
Time and pressure turned the silty layers of the seafloor into stony layers of shale, trapping the oily, gassy corpses within. These fossilized graveyards are now the bedrock that underlies much of our nation, including upstate New York, where...