University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student Mary Ellen Benson, M.S., gave a talk about her doctoral research at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History (UCM) on February 7.

Benson’s talk, titled “Exceptional Diversity of Late Eocene Freshwater Diatoms from the Florissant Formation, Teller County, Colorado,” summarized some of her work to date on the previously unstudied fossil diatoms of the Florissant Formation.

Diatoms are microscopic, single-celled, golden-brown algae with hard silica shells (frustules). These shells are extremely tiny, only 10-100 microns (1 micron = 1/1000 millimeter). Scientists use the shapes, sizes, and ornamentation of the frustules to identify diatom species. Diatoms can be divided into two major groups according to shape, centric (round) and pennate (elongated).

Although marine diatoms are known as far back as the Jurassic Period (200 million years ago), confirmed reports of freshwater diatoms in North America are much more recent. The diatoms of the Florissant Formation represent one of the earliest occurrences of freshwater diatoms in North America.

Fossil diatoms are most abundant in thin “paper shale” layers within the Florissant Formation, such as those found at the Scudder Pit Interpretive Site. Photo Credit: Melissa Barton

Benson’s research, which is partially funded by visitor fees from the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (formerly Fee Demo Program), is currently focused on identifying the fossil diatoms and comparing the Florissant assemblage to other Eocene assemblages from western North America. Additional funding sources include the Paleontological Society, Walker Van Riper Fund at UCM, Evolving Earth Foundation, Colorado Scientific Society, Colorado Mountain Club, and the Sam Van Landingham Fellowship at the California Academy of Sciences.

In order to examine the diatoms with a light microscope, Benson must break up the matrix of the rock, make a slurry, dry the slurry on cover slips, and then mount the slips on slides. However, many important identifying characteristics cannot be seen without the higher-powered scanning electron microscope (SEM). Taking a good micrograph is difficult and time-consuming.

These SEM micrographs of modern diatoms show the whole frustule of a centric diatom (A), two whole pennate diatom frustules (B), a single valve of a centric diatom (C), and another centric diatom frustule (D). Relatives of some of these diatoms are known from the fossil record. Photo Credit: Mary Ann Tiffany, San Diego State University

The Florissant diatoms are extremely diverse compared to other Eocene sites, Benson has found. Many of the Florissant genera have not been recorded in other Eocene or earlier deposits. Benson hopes to find and describe new species within these genera.

“Although the diatoms are relatively well-preserved, they are not as well-preserved [as the plant and insect fossils of Florissant],” Benson said at the talk, “so their claim to fame will be their diversity, not their preservation.”

Since diatom frustules can dissolve in alkaline water, they are not always preserved in lake deposits, even if diatoms lived in the lake. Diatomaceous sediments can also be replaced by chert if additional silica is introduced after burial.

Florissant presents an exceptional opportunity for scientists like Benson to study the evolutionary history of diatoms and what diatoms can tell us about the ecology and chemistry of ancient lakes.

-Melissa Barton

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mary Ellen Benson and Dr. Dena M. Smith for assistance in writing this article.

Exhibits of Friends history were displayed in the yurt all day, along with the items for the silent auction. At left, sketches and other materials related to the design of the Friends t-shirt and patch, as well as the Junior Ranger patch. All of these were designed by Dorrie Bradley, whose husband Rick was the first president of the Friends.

The Friends have been involved in organizing many events, from March for the Parks to Homestead Days at the Hornbek Homestead. There was also an exhibit of seminar photographs and past newsletters, as well as photographs from last year’s T.D.A. Cockerell Expedition Centennial.

Dr. Bill Dexter, the third president of the Friends and a former seasonal paleontologists at the Fossil Beds, led a guided hike on the Petrified Forest Loop in the afternoon, starting at the “beginning of life” and walking to the “present.”

Ranger Shawn Frizzell answers a question about wildflowers before the hike starts.

A view across the ancient lakebed towards Crystal Peak. The Petrified Forest Loop winds around the edge of this field, past several fossil redwood stumps (including the Big Stump) and back to the Visitor Center.

In the afternoon, Lead Interpretive Ranger Jeff Wolin, volunteer Ron Haberkorn, and museum technician Melissa Barton gave a short program on the design and assembly of the new exhibits. Here Ron discusses techniques for cutting foam nests for fossils so they won’t slide around when drawers are open and shut. Volunteers like Ron were crucial in assembling the new exhibits, and did excellent work.

After nature songs with Ranger Jeff, the Florissant Jammers and the caterer set up. During dinner, past Friends presidents and former park superintendent Jean Rodeck made remarks, and awards were handed out.

Most notably, Jeff Wolin received both the annual Visitor Service Award from the Friends and an NPS STAR Award in recognition for his huge amount of work this past year, both on the new exhibits and Junior Ranger Program and his usual coordination of the interpretive program and supervision of interns and seasonal employees. Jeff worked many long days and wore even more hats than usual, and fully deserves both awards.

The Friends also presented the park with a check for $3000, which will help fund remodelling of the Visitor Center bathrooms, among other projects.

The anniversary was a wonderful reunion and celebration for the Friends. Although we are a small group, we have accomplished many important projects for the park over the last 20 years, thanks to your time, skills, and financial support. Here’s to another fun and productive 20 years!

-Melissa Barton

Photo Credits: Melissa Barton

Cockerell’s Contributions Celebrated

Melissa Barton

Naturalist Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell was one of the most prolific researchers to collect at Florissant. He described hundreds of species, many of which still stand today. T.D.A. Cockerell’s interests were broad: he studied plants, insects, and mollusks at Florissant, although his particular interest was in the fossil insects.

This summer marked the centennial of Cockerell’s first collecting expedition to Florissant in the summer of 1906. The expeditions of 1906-1908 collected many of the most spectacular and scientifically interesting fossils to come from the lake shales of Florissant. Today these specimens are scattered through the collections of museums across the country and in Europe, although many remain at the University of Colorado Museum.

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, in cooperation with the University of Colorado Museum and the Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, celebrated the centennial with a wreath-laying ceremony at Columbia Cemetery and reception at the museum on Friday, June 9, followed by speakers, a luncheon, and a field trip to several of Cockerell’s collection sites on Saturday, June 10.

“When I was doing the inventory of all the Florissant collections, I thought this was something we could do when 2006 rolled around,” said Dr. Herb Meyer, the Monument paleontologist. “Why not celebrate the people who made the important contributions long ago?”

Dr. Dena Smith, the Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the CU Museum, organized Friday’s events. Both T.D.A. Cockerell and his second wife, Wilmatte Porter Cockerell, are buried at the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder. Meyer and other park employees arranged the wreath, which was donated by the Friends. The wreath contained plants Cockerell collected as fossils at Florissant—redwood, cattail, elderberry, oak, rose, hydrangea—and bees. Although Cockerell was a generalist who studied both fossil and modern plants and animals, bees were his particular research interest—he collected over 900 species of modern bees in Colorado alone.

Jean Rodeck, former superintendent of the Monument, introduced the speakers on Saturday. Her father, Dr. Hugo Rodeck, was encouraged by Cockerell to study biology, and became director of the CU Museum.

“On Dr. Cockerell’s gravestone it says ‘Naturalist—Humanitarian—Teacher,’ and I really feel that ‘mentor’ should be added to that,” said Rodeck, who followed in her father’s footsteps. “I would not be here if it were not for T.D.A. Cockerell.”

Keynote speaker Dr. William A. Weber, Professor Emeritus of Natural History at the CU Museum, only met Cockerell once, when Hugo Rodeck took him to the Cockerells’ house for dinner. “I was not impressed,” Weber said. “He didn’t say one word.” Today Weber is Cockerell’s most enthusiastic admirer.

“It turns out that I have followed the kind of career Cockerell recommended,” Weber said with a smile, “that scientists diverge from their main interests every 20 years or so.” One of Weber’s long-term interests turned out to be Cockerell. Over the past several years, Weber has collected and published three volumes of Cockerell’s letters and essays, as well as a biobibliography.

When CU dismantled Cockerell’s office to save space, Weber rescued all of the papers and stored them in the library until the Archives were established. Weber and his assistants ultimately spent years transcribing Cockerell’s letters and hunting down papers for the biobibliography.

Cockerell “practically invented Darwin for America,” according to Weber, who also noted that Cockerell was an early environmentalist, probably the first person to write about ships dumping oil at sea.

“I’m bubbling over today about this whole thing,” Weber said of the events.

Meyer spoke about Cockerell’s contributions to paleobotany at Florissant, emphasizing the process of science. Cockerell corrected identifications by earlier scientists, some of which have since been corrected and some of which are still valid. Cockerell himself believed that a good scientist corrected his own “likely to be numerous” errors.

Cockerell also thought beyond North America and Europe when making identifications, and was one of the first to think in terms of an ecological mosaic around the lake. Perhaps most significantly, Cockerell began a longstanding relationship between the University of Colorado and the Florissant Fossil Beds.

Smith first learned about Florissant from Cockerell’s papers, and ultimately conducted her doctoral research at the Monument. While largely forgotten in other fields, Cockerell is still widely known and respected among entomologists, largely for his development of identification “characters” for fossil insects.

“Cockerell had to deal with flattened fossils,” Smith said, “so he couldn’t use traditional entomology techniques.”

Cockerell thought about the types of characters that would best be preserved as fossils, and in the process realized that many fossil insects actually belong to modern genera. Many of these characters are still used by paleoentomologists today to identify fossil insects.

But Cockerell wasn’t just a taxonomist. “He was interested in broader evolutionary patterns,” Smith said. “That wasn’t how things were done back then. He set the foundations for those of us who came later.”

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and the Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds honored Weber with a certificate in recognition of his work in preserving and sharing Cockerell’s legacy. The Archives, University of Colorado Libraries, recently finished a catalogue for the papers which Weber saved from Cockerell’s office.

Following the luncheon, Meyer led a field trip with Beth Simmons and myself to some of Cockerell’s collection sites in and around the Monument, including the productive and seldom-visited “Station 14” in the northwestern corner of the Monument and the railroad cut east of town where the “flower car” of the Colorado Midland Railway Co. used to stop to allow tourists to collect fossils and wildflowers.

After a stop at a fossil site near the Florissant cemetery, the trip ended with an excursion to the Big Stump, the most famous fossil redwood visible in the park. Four of Cockerell’s collection sites were located nearby.

The celebrations were a great success, although Cockerell himself would probably have been a bit embarrassed by all the acclaim. Now it’s time to mark calendars for the Harry D. MacGinitie centennial in 2036.

Suggested Reading

The American Cockerell: A Naturalist’s Life, 1866-1948, edited by William A. Weber (2000).

The Valley of the Second Sons: Letters of Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, a young English naturalist, writing to his sweetheart and her brother about his life in West Cliff, Wet Mountain Valley, Colorado, 1887-1890, edited by William A. Weber (2004).

Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, 1866-1948 (biobibliography), by William A. Weber (1965).

The Fossils of Florissant, by Herbert W. Meyer (2003).

A paper about the scientific history of Florissant, including Cockerell’s work, will appear in an upcoming Geological Society of America Special Paper, “Paleontology of the Upper Eocene Florissant Formation”, edited by Herb Meyer and Dena Smith. More information will be posted here as it becomes available; the volume is scheduled for release in December 2007 or January 2008.

Photo Credits

“An enumeration of the localities in the Florissant Basin, from which fossils were obtained in 1906,” by T.D.A. Cockerell (1907), in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (historic photos of Fossil Stump Hill and the Florissant Valley)
Melissa Barton (all others)

In honor of National Park Week (April 22-29) and the first National Junior Ranger Day (April 27), Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument announced that its Junior Ranger Program will now be free. This decision has been made possible with assistance from the Friends and the Rocky Mountain Nature Association.

The park’s Junior Ranger Program consists of a book of activities to complete, after which the participant can choose either a Junior Ranger badge or a patch showing a paper wasp, possibly the park’s most iconic fossil.

Since the park is installing new exhibits, the Junior Ranger booklet will need to be updated. Last summer’s Teacher-Ranger-Teacher, Greg Spalding, has been hired to revise and coordinate the Junior Ranger Program this summer.

A park ranger of tomorrow

While many young visitors to parks participate in Junior Ranger Programs, few are as enthusiastic as Chandler Johnson of Rome, Georgia. After participating in her first Junior Ranger program at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, she has gone on to complete over 100 Junior Ranger Programs.

Johnson wears a vest covered with Junior Ranger badges and patches when she visits national parks. She hopes one day to complete every offered Junior Ranger Program. Johnson enjoys hiking and viewing wayside exhibits, and believes it is important to respect our national parks.

“I believe the country should know that national parks, historic sites, and recreational areas are all very cool places that our nation has made for us,” she says. “Go visit some of the national parks and learn something new!”

-Melissa Barton

“A park ranger of tomorrow” is based on an article by Norton Canfield, Park Guide at Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.
Photo Credit: Larry Villalva, Superintendent at Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.

Exhibit Cabinets

Over the last few weeks, Lead Interpretive Ranger Jeff Wolin and several volunteers assembled the drawers for the three new exhibit cabinets, which are now installed in the Visitor Center.

The drawers contain carefully selected fossils from Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument’s museum collections and a loan from Waynesburg College, as well as photographs of microscopic fossils and exceptional specimens at other institutions and casts of fossil mammal jaws.

This cabinet stands next to the door to the new theatre, where the park’s film plays three times an hour. Step-stools are provided so children can view the fossils.  Drawers hold fossils carefully nestled in Ethafoam&tm; cutouts to protect them from jostling when the drawers are pulled out.

Fossil Mounting

Yesterday, Wilson taught a group of interns and volunteers how to mount fossils in brass mounts. After trimming the brass arms, pounding the tips flat, and rounding them with a file, the mounts are carefully bent around the fossil block so as not to touch the surface of the fossil impression itself. These fossils will be screwed into upright panels, to be installed on top of the cabinets and in a wall display.

Upright Panels

The printed backgrounds for the upright panels are attached to foamcore board, which had to be glued to the wooden panels themselves. Many of the upright panels also have fossils mounted on them.

The fossils have to be positioned against the panel. Then a hole is drilled and the fossil mount is screwed in. This wall case panel is protected by a sheet of plexiglass. These cases are both more dustproof and easier to clean and access than the old exhibit cases.

The completed display! Like the old “What is a fossil?” display, this exhibit explains different kinds of fossilization processes.

It uses specimens and photographs of Florissant fossils to illustrate the types of fossilization found in the park, as well as a few types of fossils not found at the park (such as amber, tar pits, and dinosaurs). The old exhibit contained an assortment of fossils from a variety of places, so we’re excited about the new display being more specific to the park.

What’s Next?

The exhibit from last summer’s nature photography seminar, up since September, has finally been taken down (somewhat the worse for weather). A large panel showing an artist’s reconstruction of ancient Lake Florissant will replace it. Inside, the upright panels for the cabinets still need to be installed, as well as puzzles for children.

-Melissa Barton

Photo Credits: Melissa Barton