The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds

Notes From the Field: A Tale of Two Lakes…
Notes From the Field: More Mountain Mahogany?

Eva Lyon, Kathy Salas, and Melissa Smeins surveying a potential Antero site in a roadcut. The site proved to have the wrong type of rocks.

Our last two field days were a great example of how scientific fieldwork doesn’t always run smoothly. After last week’s heavy rains, most of the shale was buried in mud, and the exposed shale was extremely fragile. On our third day, we were joined by geoscientist Melissa Smeins from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Mary Ellen Benson, a graduate student at the University of Colorado who is studying Florissant’s fossil diatoms (algae) for her dissertation.

We spent the third day working in the road grader’s ditch, but the layer exposed proved to be rich in ostracods (”seed shrimp”) but not much else. We collected a number of samples for further pollen analysis, as well as some samples from the ostracod-rich layers for possible diatom study (ostracods feed on diatoms), but only found a few insect fossils and one leaf fragment that may be identifiable later.

On the fourth day, we explored the south end of the Antero Formation with Smeims, hoping to find some more localities on BLM land or in a road easement. Although we saw pronghorns and wildflowers, fossil sites proved elusive. The Antero Formation is poorly mapped, and much of South Park is thoroughly vegetated and lacking in outcrops. We did observe some heavily mineralized fossil wood, probably redwood (Sequoia), but the trip was otherwise unproductive.

Fortunately, we still have all of next summer to collect, as well as an abundance of pollen samples. We have also just obtained some photographs of specimens at the Yale Peabody Museum, which has a handful of fossil plants from the Antero in its collections. This collection, although small, is much more diverse than ours and will probably be an important component of the floral reconstruction.

If you have any questions, you can comment below and I’ll try to answer (your email address will not be posted publically or shared; it is only for verification purposes).

-Melissa Barton

Photo Credits: Melissa Barton

This project is funded by a Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit agreement with the University of Colorado, and permission to work and collect in South Park road easements was granted by Park County and the State of Colorado. The fossils will remain the property of the State, to be reposited for future study and exhibit at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument or the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.