EPOD - a service of USRA
The Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) highlights the diverse processes and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory
captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The
community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and
relevant links.
Fossil Lake’s Legacy at Wyoming’s Fossil Butte
September 28, 2022
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Photographer: Ray Boren
Summary Author: Ray Boren
Over 50 million years ago — during the Eocene Epoch, after the age
of dinosaurs and as a result of the rise of the Rocky Mountains — a
freshwater lake formed in western North America, covering an area that
today is partly in southwestern Wyoming, northern Utah and a bit of
Idaho. Geologists and paleontologists call the vanished body of water
Fossil Lake, because its sediments, rich in calcium carbonate,
excellently preserved the remains of prehistoric fish, birds, mammals,
reptiles, amphibians, insects and subtropical plants, such as ferns and
palm trees. The U.S. National Park Service’s Fossil Butte National
Monument, west of Kemmerer, Wyoming, encompasses just a fraction of
Fossil Lake’s now-uplifted territory, and the displays in its visitor
center showcase the rediscovered diversity of life (top photo). Fossil
displays include lizards, snakes, small extinct mammals, a couple of
bats, a caiman, and at the bottom left, a typically small early horse
( Protorohippus venticolum) of the Eocene — member of a taxonomic
family that subsequently disappeared from the continent upon which it
evolved.
In the 2nd photograph, my great-nephew, Hunter, is standing inside
Fossil Butte’s visitor center next to a much-fractured 13-foot-long (4
m) cast of a crocodilian fossil, Borealosuchus wilsoni. A third
image (bottom), taken along the park’s scenic drive, presents the
eroded, and sometimes slumping, buttes and slopes of the Green
River Formation, in which the fossils are quarried.
The Fossil Butte area also played a part in the fabled “ Bone Wars,”
or “Dinosaur Wars,” of the late 19th century. Naturalists and
scientists made note of early fossil finds during the era’s exploratory
mapping and transcontinental railroad surveys. Rival
paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope
were famously among the scientists and professors who vied in
discovering and describing fossils. They and others often hired
individuals and teams to dig and gather fossils for them, which were
sent to universities, laboratories and museums. Fossil Lake specimens
made their way to scientists and collectors in the Eastern United
States and around the world, a process that continues today from
quarries on state and private land. Photos taken on August 1, 2022.
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Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming Coordinates: 41.8563 -110.7625
Related EPODs
Fossil Lake’s Legacy at Wyoming’s Fossil Butte Wagon Tracks
from the Old West? First Light on the Circle Cliffs Anticline
Mudcracks: Now and Then Mantling on Utah’s Hogback Ridge
Dendrite Inclusion in Opal
More...
Geology Links
* Earthquakes
* Geologic Time
* Geomagnetism
* General Dictionary of Geology
* Mineral and Locality Database
* Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness
* This Dynamic Earth
* USGS
* MyShake - University of California, Berkeley
* USGS Ask a Geologist
* USGS/NPS Geologic Glossary
* USGS Volcano Hazards Program
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