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.

Maxillopods have been around since the mid-Cambrian, about 510 million years ago. Their shortened bodies and juvenile external features make them look like larvae. One hypothesis is that the common ancestors of all maxillopods were organisms that became reproductively mature before their bodies changed into externally adult forms (neoteny). The oldest known fossil maxillopod is a barnacle (Priscansermarinus barnetti). Unlike the barnacles of today, this species did not have an external protective shell. Later maxillopods were shelled, but their fossil record is patchy, in many cases consisting of just shell fragments. Because maxillopods often live in turbulent environments, like rocky shorelines, their remains get broken up. Beginning during the Early Devonian (about 415 million years ago), common maxillopod fossils are casts of borings where barnacles drilled into shells of other animals. Sediments infilled the boreholes and fossilized, creating trace fossils in the shape of the boreholes. Copepods are another group of tiny maxillopods that are now abundant and diverse, but are nearly absent from the fossil record.