On the east side of the Takamine Bridge along the old road, you can see the strata from over 6 to 8.5 million years ago called the “Utsutouge strata.” Many fossils of shellfish and plants that once lived in the shallow seas have been discovered in these strata. Currently, a part of the area has been covered in concrete, but it is possible to find fossils of creatures that lived in the shallow seas from the forest path along the west side of the Shirakawa Dam management office. The existence of these marine life fossils reveals that the area surrounding the Nakatsugawa region was once an ocean.