For decades, museums and textbooks confidently asserted that mud rocks—such as limestone, siltstone, mudstone, and shale—were formed over vast eons as super-fine sediments slowly settled to the bottom of shallow lakes or seas.

A TV ad several decades ago stated with an air of authority that "dogs love cheese." No reports were cited and no canine polls performed, yet marketers hoped its mere repetition would drive the public to buy the cheese-flavored snack for their dogs, regardless of whether the claim was true.

Mount Moran, the nonconformist of Wyoming's Teton Range, is distinguished by having a blunt top, a prominent black vertical stripe on its upper part, and a tiny visible cap of marine sandstone on the summit. Its face is made of the same solid granitic stock as comprises the core of the other mountains of the Teton Range, but it differs in other respects.