Artist’s reconstruction of the ancient Florissant forest by Rob Wood. NPS.
The July August issue of The Interpreter, a magazine for professional and volunteer interpretive educators, features as its cover story an article by Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument Volunteer Interpretive Specialist Heidi Bailey called “Are Your Stories Lost in Space? Interpret the Geography of a Place.”
In the article, Bailey uses Florissant as a vivid example of how telling the geographic as well as historical story of a place can enrich interpretation and engage visitors.
Bailey writes
Geography is about visualizing large spaces, getting acquainted with special places, and connecting to the Earth as a whole. The places and spaces around us are integral to our lives and should play a significant role in the stories we tell.
Bailey provides concrete activities that interpreters can use in their work. She can be contacted at hbailey@fossilbeds.org.
Thanks to partnerships with the Catamount Institute and other local organization, Colorado residents will have the chance to hear Richard Louv, author of the award-winning book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder and recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, speak at the Pikes Peak Center this October.
Tickets go on sale August 1 at 10 a.m. This event is part of No Child Left Inside Weekend, a collaboration between many Pikes Peak area parks and nature centers. For more information about scheduled activities and events as it becomes available, visit Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument’s No Child Left Inside website.
Who: Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
When: 7:00 p.m., Friday, October 3, 2008 (doors open at 5:30 p.m. for exhibits)
Where: Pikes Peak Center, Colorado Springs, CO
For more information, email info@catamountinstitute.org or call 719-471-0910, Ext. 106. Tickets go on sale August 1 at 10 a.m. Adults $10, Educators $7, Students $5. Contact Tickets West at 719-520-SHOW.
Plague has been found in prairie dog populations in Teller County. Due to the high rodent population around the Hornbek Homestead at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, this area is currently closed. However, the rest of the park remains open.
Please remember not to feed any wildlife, both for your health and theirs. For more information on health and safety at the park, call 719-748-3253.
Photo: Wing-Chi Poon (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License)
Scientists, including Friends president Steven W. Veatch, will be continuing research on the Ice Age mammoth discovered at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in 2002. Veatch, who has an M.S. in geology from Emporia State University, presented a paper on the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in 2004. The mammoth, informally dubbed “Milo,” is at least 33 million years younger than the other fossils of Florissant, dating to the Pleistocene period.
Now Veatch and Dr. David M. Jarzen of the Paleobotany and Palynology Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History will be studying the environment the mammoth lived in using some very tiny clues–fossil pollen from the sediments surrounding the mammoth bones.
The tough coatings of pollen grains hold up well in the fossil record, so pollen often provides important clues to past environments even when larger plant fossils are absent. Pollen can often be identified to at least a family or generic level. Since no other large fossils were found with the mammoth, Veatch applied for and received a grant to study fossil pollen, which was extracted from the sediment and prepared on slides by a Canadian palynology lab.
Veatch is excited to be continuing work on the Florissant mammoth, and hopes to present the findings of this new study at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in 2010.
For more information on Milo the Mammoth, read High elevation Mammuthus from the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado.
-Melissa Barton
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Friends of the Park group supporting