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NEWPORT - From a geologist's perspective, Oregon today is merely a frame in a movie that's been running for 400 million years. A geologist and author will be sharing her new book and her views of that long history in a talk at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center, Saturday, May 22.

Ellen Morris Bishop will discuss her book, titled "In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History," at the Hennings Auditorium starting at 1:30 p.m. A book signing will follow the talk at about 2:30 p.m. in the HMSC bookstore.

Bishop's talk will focus on the coast and is titled "In Search of Ancient Shores: How Oregon's Coast Migrated from Idaho to Newport."

In the beginning, Oregon's foundations lay far off the Idaho seacoast as tropical volcanic islands, Bishop writes. Collision with these exotic terrains produced the first land that was truly Oregon.

Subsequent eruptions of volcanoes in central and eastern Oregon - where bananas grew and tiny horses browsed on figs and lotus leaves - built the coastline westward. The story that follows continues to fascinate, with such episodes as when mastodons and dire wolves prowled the Willamette Valley at the end of the Ice Age.

Bishop's book is illustrated by 220 of her color photographs, including those of well-known features like Crater Lake, Steens Mountain, the Columbia River Gorge, and more remote places like the Wallowas and Owyhees. The book is published by Timber Press.

Bishop received her Ph.D. in geology at Oregon State University and has conducted research, published scientific articles, and taught geology and environmental sciences for Eastern Oregon University, Lewis and Clark College, and Marylhurst University. In previous years she wrote a science column for The Oregonian and served as the science reporter for The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash.