The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. | August 23, 2007
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.
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. | August 22, 2007
The second day, we started by looking for a known Antero Formation locality near where we worked on day one, but the rock was very eroded and it was difficult to tell whether the rocks were fossil-bearing. We then returned to our first site and made a second pass. Because of the level of weathering and our limit to the road easement, we worked the site in pieces, primarily on the surface.
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. | August 20, 2007
I’m Melissa Barton, and in addition to maintaining the Friends website, I am currently the Museum Technician at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. This fall I will begin graduate school in Museum & Field Studies at the University of Colorado. I’m currently getting a head start on my master’s thesis, which will focus on the plant paleoecology of the Antero Formation of South Park and its relationship to regional and global climate. I plan to post updates here about my research, primarily about the process of paleontology, from fieldwork to lab to (hopefully) publication.
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. | June 27, 2007
While the paleontology of Florissant has been studied extensively, the geology is less well-known. This summer and over the next few years, Dr. Charles Ver Straeten, a sedimentary geologist from the New York State Museum, will be studying the preservation of volcanic ash layers in the late Eocene Florissant Formation, which dates to about 34 Ma (million years ago).
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Friends of the Park group supporting Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in its mission to protect and interpret the park's resources for future generations.
