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.
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument’s scientific database is back
up at planning.nps.gov/flfo/. Web users can search for important Florissant specimens in museum collections around the world and view associated data and photographs.
The park has received a Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit (CESU) grant, in conjunction with the University of Colorado at Boulder, to update and expand the database project.
The Ponderosa Loop Trail is expected to remain closed for maintenance until at least mid-September. The park’s other trails remain open, including the Petrified Forest Loop Trail. For more information on trails, visit the park website.
The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History’s Invertebrate Paleontology and Paleobotany collections are now searchable online at CU Museum Paleontology Invertebrate and Plant Database.
The Museum is one of few worldwide to have sizeable and historically important fossil terrestrial arthropod collections, including a large collection (approximately 4800 specimens) of historically and scientifically important fossils of plants, insects, and other invertebrates from the Florissant Formation. The majority of these specimens were collected in 1906-1908 by T.D.A. Cockerell and others during their summer expeditions to Florissant.
The database will be updated in the future, and the Museum hopes to eventually add photographs of the specimens. Congratulations to the Museum for getting this excellent resource up and running!
-Melissa Barton
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Friends of the Park group supporting