Delaware offers a few sites for fossil collectors, and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and the Pollack Farm are the best. Other locations throughout the state also offer good hunting grounds for fossil collectors. Just south of Dagsboro, where Route 113 crosses Pepper Creek, the collector can find young (less than 2 million year old) marine fossils from the Pleistocene Epoch. At the state sand and gravel pit just south of Middletown on Route 896, plant impressions from the Pleistocene may be found.

The State of Delaware is located within two physiographic provinces, the Appalachian Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The Fall Zone divides these two provinces and essentially runs parallel to Delaware Rt. 2, Kirkwood Highway.

The Delaware Piedmont is but a small part of the Appalachian Mountain system that extends from Georgia to Newfoundland. This mountain system is the result of tectonic activity that took place during the Paleozoic era, between 543 and 245 million years ago. Since that time, the mountains have been continuously eroding, and their deep roots slowly rising in compensation as the overlying rocks are removed. It is surprising to find that although the Delaware Piedmont has passed through the whole series of tectonic events that formed the Appalachians, the mineralogy and structures preserved in Delaware were formed by the early event that occurred between 470 and 440 million years ago, called the Taconic orogeny.

Delaware and surrounding areas experienced an earthquake event on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23, 2011. According to the US Geological Survey, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck at 1:51 p.m. in central Virginia, in an area referred to as “the Central Virginia Seismic Zone” because of its relatively active earthquake activity for the region. The epicenter was located five miles south-southwest of Mineral, Virginia, with the quake was focused at a depth of 6 km (3.7 miles) below the surface (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html). The Virginia Geological Survey reports that this is the largest Virginia earthquake known in historic times. A few small aftershocks have occurred in the hours afterward.