About 3 to 3.35 million years ago, when sea level was several meters higher than it is today, southern Florida was submerged by a shallow tropical sea with reefs and wetlands that were home to numerous mollusks, corals, fish, mammals, and birds. Although the shell, coral, and mollusk remains are fossils and are scientifically valuable to paleontologists and geologists, there is such a large supply of them that they can be used for other purposes. The Golden Gate Quarry uses the fossil shells and coral from this ancient environment in concrete mix in the foundations of buildings and for roads and highways in the area. Take a look when you walk down the roadways in Florida and try to find the same types of fossils from the quarry as part of the road itself.

It is surprising to most people that fossils are actually used to build roads and buildings. The fossils from the Golden Gate Quarry may be mixed with rocks and used as "fill" beneath roads and highways. They may also be mixed in the asphalt and be seen at the road surface. Rock and fossils from this ancient reef may also be used in producing cement, the glue of concrete. The concrete used to make curbs and gutters will contain these materials, and if you look closely, you can find shells and corals mixed in these products.

During their long history on Earth (about 500 million years), gastropods have evolved various ways to feed. Flat snails (e.g., Maclurites) likely lived like clams, sitting in one place and eating small food suspended in the water. They were common in the Paleozoic, but are now extremely rare. Most gastropods actively find detritus or algae to eat, scraping food off rocks or other surfaces using a special mouthpart (the radula). Other gastropods are carnivores: shells with holes in them are evidence of gastropods using their radula to drill a hole and eat the animal inside. The earliest gastropods were detritivores, but carnivory has evolved independently several times (convergent evolution). During the shift from herbivory to carnivory, the teeth on gastropod's radulas were lost or modified for use as predatory tools. Early gastropods lived in the sea, but by the Carboniferous (360 - 299 million years ago) some freshwater gastropods invaded land. During the transition to land, gastropod shells either remained rather thick (in dry climates) or were reduced or even lost altogether (in humid climates).