<P> Much of New York was covered in seawater during the early part of the Paleozoic era . This sea came to be inhabited by invertebrates like brachiopods, conodonts, eurypterids, jellyfish, and trilobites . Local marine vertebrates included arthrodires, chimaeroids, lobe - finned fishes, and lungfish . By the Devonian the state was home to some of the oldest known forests . </P> <P> The Carboniferous and Permian are missing from the local rock record . Little is known about Mesozoic New York, but during the early part of the era, carnivorous dinosaurs left behind footprints which later fossilized . The early to mid Cenozoic is also mostly absent from the local rock record . However, evidence indicates that during the Ice Age the state was worked over by glaciers, and home to creatures like giant beavers and mammoths . </P> <P> The Silurian sea scorpion Eurypterus remipes is the New York state fossil . </P> <P> New York has a very rich fossil record . Little evidence remains of New York's Precambrian life, although some were preserved in the Adirondack region of the state . New York was covered by a shallow sea during the Late Cambrian . Jellyfish inhabited the state at this time . Other inhabitants of this sea included brachiopods, clams, and trilobites . These groups continued to inhabit this sea into the Ordovician . The terrestrial Ordovician rocks of New York record the process of a coastal plain encroaching westward into an inland sea from a chain of mountains rising along the easternmost edge of North America . Local sea levels had dropped by the ensuing Silurian period . As the sea level lowered the waters covering the western part of the state became shallower and the salt more highly concentrated . </P>

Where do we have missing rock record in new york state why could this have happened