Did Missouri (Allegedly) Used to Be Ocean-Front Property? Perhaps

I have come across a time-lapse map that claims Missouri used to be ocean-front property, but is it true? Let's take a deep dive (ocean pun intended) and see if this theory has any basis in fact.

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Prepare yourself for something potentially funny. I (with my 2nd grade education, thank you very much) will be critiquing what college scientists claim is a progression of geological changes in North America that used to mean (maybe) that Missouri was on the coast of an ocean.

One of my friends shared this video by Rockstone Research which says this about the video you're about to see:

This animation shows the relationship of: (1) the geologic evolution of North America from the latest Precambrian (600 Ma) to the Present (right), and (2) the distribution of the six major stratigraphic sequences in time and space for North America, as defined by Larry Sloss (1963).

I'll save you a little bit of time and share the time around 470 million years ago when they say that Missouri had an ocean on its southern border. Bad news for Arkansas as they only survived if they were dolphins instead of Razorbacks.

While I find this theory fascinating, I had another friend that I mentioned this to ask "how could they really know?" That's a valid question. I'm sure there's some science stuff they learned at Harvard that convinces them this is truth. However, not everyone agrees and I specifically take issue with what I believe are wildly unreliable dating methods they use as a foundation for much of their belief. For what it's worth, the University of Chicago agrees with me saying that "even a little extra carbon from contamination will throw off the results significantly. A million-year-old sample contaminated by only a tiny amount of carbon could yield an invalid age of 40,000 years, for example". (*mic drop*)

I will add that I find theories (not proven facts, sorry not sorry) like this interesting. If true, ocean-front real estate in Missouri (perhaps a fancy hut?) would have been very popular.