Journey to the northwestern sector of Death Valley National Park to visit one of the great Early Cambrian fossil localities in North America--the Waucoba Spring Geologic Section in Death Valley National Park, first studied by legendary Cambrian fossil specialist C. D. Walcott in the late 1890s.

Please note: Fossil collecting is prohibited within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park, except by special permit from the National Park Service--a special use permit given solely to individuals with a minimum B.S. degree from an accredited university who seek to undertake research that can be fully verified and corroborated by the National Park Service. No fossil can be removed from the world-famous Waucoba Spring geologic section in Death Valley National Park without such a permit.

And now for the obligatory words of caution. Endemic to the Mojave Desert of California, including the Las Vegas, Nevada, region by the way, is Valley Fever. This is a potentially serious illness called, scientifically, Coccidioidomycosis, or "coccy" for short; it's caused by the inhalation of an infectious airborne fungus whose spores lie dormant in the uncultivated, harsh alkaline soils of the Mojave Desert. And Death Valley National Park just happens to lie within a northern sector of the Mojave where Valley Fever spores have likely been detected. When an unsuspecting and susceptible individual breaths the spores into his or her lungs, the fungus springs to life, as it prefers the moist, dark recesses of the human lungs (cats, dogs, rodents and even snakes, among other vertebrates, are also susceptible to "coccy") to multiply and be happy. Most cases of active Valley Fever resemble a minor touch of the flu, though the majority of those exposed show absolutely no symptoms of any kind of illness; it is important to note, of course, that in rather rare instances Valley Fever can progress to a severe and serious infection, causing high fever, chills, unending fatigue, rapid weight loss, inflammation of the joints, meningitis, pneumonia and even death. Every fossil enthusiast who chooses to visit the Mojave Desert must be fully aware of the risks involved.

Relatively few localities on Earth record the important Precambrian-Early Cambrian transition period--a fascinating and truly mysterious interval some 550 to 509 million years ago, when abundant animal life with a hard external covering first appears in the geologic record.

One of the best places to study this crucial boundary between two major geological Eras (Precambrian and Paleozoic) is the Waucoba Spring district some 35 miles southeast of Big Pine, California, on the eastern slopes of the Inyo Mountains, a locality that now lies within the northwestern border of Death Valley National Park (as of 1994, when the Desert Protection Act became law).  Here can be found the classic Waucoba Spring geologic section, first measured and described by legendary Cambrian specialist Charles Doolittle Walcott in the 1890s.

Walcott is of course most famous for discovering the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale fauna of Canada, an extraordinary assemblage of soft-bodied organisms also recognized from a specific Early Cambrian site in China. But Walcott was vitally interested in all aspects of the Cambrian Period, and his detailed analysis of the Waucoba Spring geologic section elevated the site to the status of type reference section for the Waucoban Series of the lowermost Cambrian (542 to 509 million years ago). This means that all age-equivalent strata in the world are correlated with the Waucoba Spring rocks.

Not only is the important Precambrian-Cambrian boundary well exposed near Waucoba Spring, but the sequence is amazingly fossiliferous for strata of such profound antiquity. Among the diverse fossil types that can be observed in situ at Waucoba are archeocyathids, an extinct invertebrate animal that secreted a conical to cup-shaped shell typically one-quarter to two inches long--among the earliest reef-forming animals on Earth, it was likely an early calcareous sponge, although not a few archeocyathid purists still prefer to call it a unique organism with no known modern analogs, deserving of its own scientific Phylum. There are also worm trails, miscellaneous invertebrate tracks and trails (probably from annelids and trilobitic arthropods), salterella (an early experiment, now an extinct member of the Phylum called Agmata, with a small tusk-shaped shell roughly a quarter inch long), algal bodies, brachiopods, and trilobites. Most of the fossil material is surprisingly well-preserved, and there is even one specific site where perfect, intact trilobite carapaces can be observed. Please note of course that the Waucoba Spring geologic section presently resides within the borders of Death Valley National Park. One must not remove fossil specimens within the park's boundaries without formal, written approval from the National Park Service personnel at Furnace Creek in Death Valley.

To reach the Waucoba Spring geologic section, first travel to the intersection of Highway 395 and State Route 168 in Big Pine, Owens Valley, California. Turn east on route 168 and proceed 2.4 miles to Death Valley Road (to Saline Valley, Eureka Valley, and Scotty's Castle). Turn right here.

At the 2.3 mile mark from the SR 168, look to the north of the road (left) and you will begin to see impressive badlands carved in sedimentary rocks deposited in ancient Lake Waucoba--a dominantly detrital sequence of calcareous silts and sands and water-laid volcanic tuffs that accumulated 2.63 to 2.06 million years ago during the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene.

In the 1890s, C.D. Walcott, on his way to the Early Cambrian rocks exposed farther southeast, discovered an abundance of freshwater snail fossils from several beds in the Plio-Pleistocene section. For those interested in researching the original reference to the molluscan assemblage, Walcott's paper appears in the Journal of Geology, volume 5, 1897. In 2012, a scientific examination of the Waucoba Lake Beds--their formal geologic name (though some folks prefer "Waucobi Lake Beds")--disclosed numerous species of ostracods (a minute bi-valved crustacean), as well.

When you have driven 13.5 miles from the SR 168, turn right on Waucoba-Saline Road. This path can be followed all the way through Saline Valley, just inside the westernmost boundary of Death Valley National Park. It is for the most part a well-graded dirt road, although the Whippoorwill Canyon area a few miles up ahead tends to be rocky and rutted--a condition one would expect to encounter on a dirt route through such a defile in the mountains.

At the 8.1 mile point from Death Valley Road, Waucoba-Saline Road begins to cut through one of the oldest recognizable sedimentary rock formations in North America: the Wyman Formation. The dark-brown to gray-brown exposures along either side of the path consist of heat and pressure-altered sandstones and siltstones. Some portions of the formation have been changed to quartzite through the eons of tortuous metamorphism. From a distance, these Wyman rocks have a suspicious volcanic aspect: a blocky, basalt-like tone and style of outcropping. Closer examination, though, reveals the obvious sedimentary nature of the material; the strata reveal the characteristic layered bedding and fine-grained composition of altered sandstones and siltstones.

No animal remains have been recovered from the Wyman Formation. At this point in the local stratigraphic section you are standing thousands of feet below the first occurrence of olenellid trilobites, which in a traditional sense used to define the beginning of the Cambrian Period and the Paleozoic Era. Not any longer, though. The Precambrian-Cambrian boundary is now defined as either (1) the appearance of a trace fossil called Treptichnus pedum (feeding trails of a supposed annelid), or (2) a distinctive negative carbon isotope excursion in the sediments at the boundary. Rarely do the two defining occurrences--biological and geochemical--occur together, but there's one place in Death Valley National Park where such a unique combination of defining events can be studied. It's in Boundary Canyon near Daylight Pass, along the road to Beatty, Nevada, in the lower member of the Wood Canyon Formation.

Unicellular organisms and algae most certainly lived here during Wyman time--nearly a billion or so years ago--but due to intense metamorphism any trace of their former existence has long since been obliterated. Still and all, a relatively few pure limestone pods have been reported in the Wyman. If such rocks could be located in the predominantly detrital terrigenous terrain, one would naturally expect a greater opportunity to discover some of the oldest identifiable animal fossils on Earth.

At a point 13.8 miles from Death Valley Road, the path starts to slice through scenic Whippoorwill Canyon. Rocks exposed here belong to the upper Precambrian Reed Dolomite and the Upper Precambrian-Lower Cambrian Deep Spring Formation, roughly 560 to 542 million years old. In contrast to the predominantly detrital Wyman Formation, these two rock units contain relatively high percentages of carbonates, rocks composed of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate (dolomite) precipitated on the floors of vast shallow seas.

Near the very top of the Reed Dolomite, in strata transitional with the younger Deep Spring Formation, scientists have found one of the earliest evidences of a widespread variety of animals with shells. Most of the described specimens are minute, measured in millimeters (about one-twenty-fourth of an inch). But they represent such identifiable forms as worm tubes and primitive mollusks. I have personally scoured the Whippoorwill Canyon area for fossils but have yet to find any there. The worm-tube/primitive mollusk horizon occurs in the same formations at Mount Dunfey in neighboring Esmeralda County, Nevada. It also shows up in the Westgard Pass region several miles east of Big Pine. Even so, this is an excellent place for paleontological explorations. It is one of the most significant geologic regions in all the world. Because most of the sedimentary material exposed here is miraculously unaltered, there is great potential for the discovery of the oldest identifiable animal with a shell.

An aside here. Another ultra-significant Precambrian-Cambrian transitional stratigraphic section can be studied in the Alexander Hills District, southeast of Death Valley National Park, a California Mojave Desert locality that produces: Precambrian stromatolites over a billion years old; early skeletonized eukaryotic cells of testate amoebae around three-quarters of a billion years old; and early Cambrian trilobites, archaeocyathids, annelid trails, arthropod tracks, and echinoderm material.

For two miles the Waucoba-Saline Road carves through the Precambrian strata of Whippoorwill Canyon. All along this route you move gradually upsection--that is, as you proceed south the rocks become progressively younger in geologic age. The base, or the section bearing the oldest layers of the classic Waucoban Spring section, as defined by pioneering paleontologist Walcott, occurs in transitional rocks of the Late Precambrian-Lower Cambrian Deep Spring Formation and the overlying lowermost Cambrian Campito Formation. This world-famous change from the Precambrian to the Paleozoic Era lies directly to the east of the Waucoba-Saline Road, 16 miles from the Death Valley Road junction. To the left of the road you will note typically blocky weathering black to brownish quartzites and shales of the Andrews Mountain member of the Campito Formation, within which some of the oldest olenellid trilobites have been recovered. The fossils are by no means common here--they are, indeed, frustratingly rare: one lone occurrence discovered by a very lucky paleontologist, although unfortunate evidence exists to conclude that perhaps that specimen came from much younger strata; the trilobite was recovered from a wash and could have been transported to the site of discovery. Outcrops of the Andrews Mountain member in neighboring Esmeralda County have yielded a few identifiable trilobite specimens.

After examining the exposures of the Campito Formation here, proceed one additional mile to the turnoff to Waucoba Spring, where you will be within a short hiking distance of fossiliferous Early Cambrian strata in the Waucoba Spring geologic section. Waucoba Spring lies approximately one-half mile west of Waucoba-Saline Road, 17 miles south of the intersection with Death Valley Road.

The spring is an old and famous watering hole for the local fauna, including feral burros whose presence in the Death Valley region has generated much controversy. Some investigators claim the burros foul critical watering holes and scare off more sensitive creatures such as bighorn sheep. Others exonerate the asses, pointing out that they have just as much right to exist in the wild as any indigenous creature and charges that they are solely to blame for the ruination of the ecology are absurd.

During my first visit to the Waucoba a number of years ago, I recall having observed quite a few burros. They'd halt right in front of a moving vehicle, staring inscrutably ahead. Subsequent trips to the Waucoban wilds disclosed a dramatic drop in the observable burro population. I do not know whether natural selection has been weeding out the weak or artificial measures have been employed--such as periodic thinning of the paces/herds by gunfire.

Excellent representative exposures of the classic Early Cambrian Waucoba Spring section described by Walcott lie to the east of Waucoba-Saline Valley Road. To reach the fossil-bearing exposures it is necessary to hike approximately a quarter of a mile to the nearest hillslope, directly east of the turnoff to Waucoba Spring. This slope is composed of the greenish shales and quartzites of the Montenegro Member of the Campito Formation, within whose detrital rocks can be seen worm trails, invertebrate tracks (many made by trilobites, but also several types that have not yet been positively identified) and trilobite head shields, or cephalons (complete specimens rather rare). Another region in which to hunt for the oldest reasonably common trilobites in the geologic record is over in neighboring Esmeralda County, Nevada, where several Montenegro Member sections yield many complete Fallotaspis trilobites, along with several other early spectacularly preserved olenellid trilobites.

As you continue to hike in a generally southeasterly direction along the hillside, the greenish shales and quartzites give way to geologically younger gray-blue to buff-brown archaeocyathid-bearing limestones of the Poleta Formation. Most of the extinct calcareous sponges range from a half-inch to two inches in length, and quite a number of archeocyathid fragments have weathered out of the rocks. A few of the more densely packed clusters of archeocyathids observed in the limestones are likely the preserved remains of primitive, localized reefs.

All of the trilobites within the Poleta Formation occur in the younger, gray-green shales which lie directly on top of the archeocyathid-bearing limestone. In addition to the trilobites, perfect specimens of which remain elusively infrequent in the extensive deposits of shale, abundant worm trails and invertebrate tracks can also be seen. These fossiliferous shales are in striking stratigraphic contact with the older archeocyathid limestone, and the lithologic contrast is so distinctive that it can be traced with assurance throughout the Waucoba Spring district and western Great Basin, in general (northern Inyo County and western Esmeralda County, Nevada).

Additional superior fossil material can be observed in place from the next-youngest geologic rock unit in the Waucoban section, the Harkless Formation. Abundant worm trails and invertebrate tracks, salterella (diminutive tube-like, roughly conical shells secreted by an extinct animal of unestablished zoological affinity), and a few species of archeocyathids are characteristic of the formation, which outcrops roughly three-quarters of a mile to one mile directly east of the Waucoba Spring turnoff. The Harkless is chiefly a terrigenous unit of gray shale and siltstone, interbedded with brownish quartzites. Minor lenticular blue-gray limestones in the youngest phases of deposition often yield large archeocyathids, some up to nine inches in length.

Expect to conduct extended periods of hiking in order to examine all of the fossil material present in the Waucoba geologic section directly east of the turnoff to Waucoba Spring. The trilobites in particular are seldom even common at any one locality. They are usually confined to the greenish shales of the Poleta Formation, several feet above the archeocyathid-rich limestones.

A better place in which to observe in situ trilobites lies farther south, in much younger exposures of the Early Cambrian Waucoba Spring geologic section at Algae Ridge, where the Lower Cambrian Mule Spring Limestone contains abundant fossil remains of a species of cyanobacterial blue-green algae called Girvanella.

The Mule Spring limestone contains the highest concentration of fossil algae of any Cambrian formation in the Great Basin. It is estimated that in some horizons Girvanella algal bodies constitute fully 40 percent of the limestones by volume. At Algae Ridge these fossil remains are certainly locally prolific, appearing in the blue-gray rocks as oval to circular black concretionary structures roughly one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

The Mule Spring Limestone marks the very top, or youngest part of the Waucoba Spring geologic reference section. Above it lies the Middle Cambrian Monola Formation whose prominent exposures can be seen about a mile and a half to the south, near where the dramatic expanse of Saline Valley commences.

The prime trilobite locality lies on Algae Ridge in the Saline Valley Formation. Prior to December 1994 this site was open to hobby fossil collecting, lying as it did outside the boundaries of Death Valley National Monument. Please note that it now lies within the borders of Death Valley National Park. Look and touch, but don't keep anything you find there--unless it's a photograph of a fossil specimen, of course.

At the fossil site one can examine abundant trilobite head shields, plus occasional perfect, intact specimens. During my last visit to the site before it was assimilated by the national park system, I was fortunate to find three complete, whole trilobites--a powerfully exhilarating and rewarding experience, to be certain. Perfect specimens were surprisingly common, interestingly enough--a fact that helped set this specific Early Cambrian fossil site apart from most others. 

The Waucoba Spring district is a rugged and pristine land. It is also out in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization. This means that adventurers traveling to the region must make certain that their vehicles are in perfect working condition and carry with them extra food, plenty of water, spare fan belts (and know how to change one!) and protective clothing. In short, take all necessary precautions to ensure a safe experience.

Most of my Waucoba Spring trips were during the early Spring, mainly in early to mid April. I'm not presuming to suggest that this is the most comfortable time of the year there, but by way personal experience I recall one August spell that turned into pure vapor lock of the brain--soaring daytime temperatures even up in Whippoorwill Canyon at elevations over 7,000 feet--and a brief stay in December practically froze my toes off.

The Waucoba district certainly contains one of the greatest Early Cambrian stratigraphic sections in all the world: the classic Waucoba Spring section first described by C.D. Walcott in the late 1800s. Except for development of the graded Waucoba-Saline Road and a few additional minor off-road-vehicle trails, the region likely appears much the same as it did in 1897 when Walcott first passed through. The Precambrian-Early Cambrian transition exposed here records the preserved remains of plants and animals that lived in this part of what is now the Great Basin some 600 to 510 million years ago--a time so distant, so primordial that it echoes back to a moment when the Spirit moved over the face of the waters and said, "Let there be light." 

• The Acoustic Guitar Solitaire Of Inyo: A Cyber-CD: I play 30 covers of some of my favorite songs on an acoustic 6-string guitar; it's all free music.
• Beyond The Timberline--A Cyber-CD: I play 32 selections comprised of covers and original tunes on acoustic 6 and 12-string guitars; it's all free music.
• The Distant Path--A Cyber-CD: I play 32 acoustic guitar covers and original compositions; it's all free music.
• Inyo And Folks--A Musical History--A Quintuple Cyber-CD: My parents and I play 203 selections; it's all free music.
• Acoustic Stratigraphy--A Cyber-CD: I play 34 covers of some of my favorite songs on 6 and 12-string guitars; it's all free music.
• Back To Badwater--A Cyber-CD: I play 32 covers and original compositions on 6 and 12-string guitars; it's all free music.
• All Inyo All The Time: All six of my cyber-cds in one place (includes a quintuple cyber-cd box set); links to all of my solo acoustic guitar playing, in addition to selections my parents and I recorded during the Golden Age of our spontaneous, impromptu recording sessions. Includes an option to stream all 364 selectons; thirteen hours, seventeen minues and forty seconds of music (it's all free music).
• It's A Happening Thing--Music From The Year 1967: All songs that charted US Billboard Hot 100 (#1 to #100) and Bubbling Under (records that charted in positions #101 to #135) in 1967.

• Fossils In Death Valley National Park: A site dedicated to the paleontology, geology, and natural wonders of Death Valley National Park; lots of on-site photographs of scenic localities within the park; images of fossils specimens; links to many virtual field trips of fossil-bearing interest.
• Fossil Insects And Vertebrates On The Mojave Desert, California: Journey to two world-famous fossil sites in the middle Miocene Barstow Formation: one locality yields upwards of 50 species of fully three-dimensional, silicified freshwater insects, arachnids, and crustaceans that can be dissolved free and intact from calcareous concretions; a second Barstow Formation district provides vertebrate paleontologists with one of the greatest concentrations of Miocene mammal fossils yet recovered from North America--it's the type locality for the Barstovian State of the Miocene Epoch, 15.9 to 12.5 million years ago, with which all geologically time-equivalent rocks in North American are compared.
• A Visit To Fossil Valley, Great Basin Desert, Nevada: Take a virtual field trip to a Nevada locality that yields the most complete, diverse, fossil assemblage of terrestrial Miocene plants and animals known from North America--and perhaps the world, as well. Yields insects, leaves, seeds, conifer needles and twigs, flowering structures, pollens, petrified wood, diatoms, algal bodies, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, bird feathers, fish, gastropods, pelecypods (bivalves), and ostracods.
• Fossils At Red Rock Canyon State Park, California: Visit wildly colorful Red Rock Canyon State Park on California's northern Mojave Desert, approximately 130 miles north of Los Angeles--scene of innumerable Hollywood film productions and commercials over the years--where the Middle to Late Miocene (13 to 7 million years old) Dove Spring Formation, along with a classic deposit of petrified woods, yields one of the great terrestrial, land-deposited Miocene vertebrate fossil faunas in all the western United States.
• Cambrian And Ordovician Fossils At Extinction Canyon, Nevada: Visit a site in Nevada's Great Basin Desert that yields locally common whole and mostly complete early Cambrian trilobites, in addition to other extinct organisms such as graptolites (early hemichordate), salterella (small conical critter placed in the phylum Agmata), Lidaconus (diminutive tusk-shaped shell of unestablished zoological affinity), Girvanella (photosynthesizing cyanobacterial algae), and Caryocaris (a bivalved crustacean).
• Late Pennsylvanian Fossils In Kansas: Travel to the midwestern plains to discover the classic late Pennsylvanian fossil wealth of Kansas--abundant, supremely well-preserved associations of such invertebrate animals as brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, echinoderms, fusulinids, mollusks (gastropods, pelecypods, cephalopods, scaphopods), and sponges; one of the great places on the planet to find fossils some 307 to 299 million years old.
• Fossil Plants Of The Ione Basin, California: Head to Amador County in the western foothills of California's Sierra Nevada to explore the fossil leaf-bearing Middle Eocene Ione Formation of the Ione Basin. This is a completely undescribed fossil flora from a geologically fascinating district that produces not only paleobotanically invaluable suites of fossil leaves, but also world-renowned commercial deposits of silica sand, high-grade kaolinite clay and the extraordinarily rare Montan Wax-rich lignites (a type of low grade coal).
• Ice Age Fossils At Santa Barbara, California--Journey to the famed So Cal coastal community of Santa Barbara (about a 100 miles north of Los Angeles) to explore one of the best marine Pleistocene invertebrate fossil-bearing areas on the west coast of the United States; that's where the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation yields nearly 400 species of pelecypod bivalve mollusks, gastropods, chitons, scaphopods, pteropods, brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, ostracods (minute bivalve crustaceans), worm tubes, and foraminifers.
• Trilobites In The Marble Mountains, Mojave Desert, California: Take a trip to the place that first inspired my life-long fascination and interest in fossils--the classic trilobite quarry in the Lower Cambrian Latham Shale, in the Marble Mountains of California's Mojave Desert. It's a special place, now included in the rather recently established Trilobite Wilderness, where some 21 species of ancient plants and animals have been found--including trilobites, an echinoderm, a coelenterate, mollusks, blue-green algae and brachiopods.
• Fossil Plants In The Neighborhood Of Reno, Nevada: Visit two famous fossil plant localities in the Great Basin Desert near Reno, Nevada--a place to find leaves, seeds, needles, foilage, and cones in the middle Miocene Pyramid and Chloropagus Formations, 15.6 and 14.8 to 13.3 million years old, respectively.
• Dinosaur-Age Fossil Leaves At Del Puerto Creek, California: Journey to the western edge of California's Great Central Valley to explore a classic fossil leaf locality in an upper Cretaceous section of the upper Cretaceous to Paleocene Moreno Formation; the plants you find there lived during the day of the dinosaur.
• Early Cambrian Fossils Of Westgard Pass, California: Visit the Westgard Pass area, a world-renowned geologic wonderland several miles east of Big Pine, California, in the neighboring White-Inyo Mountains, to examine one of the best places in the world to find archaeocyathids--an enigmatic invertebrate animal that went extinct some 510 million years ago, never surviving past the early Cambrian; also present there in rocks over a half billion years old are locally common trilobites, plus annelid and arthropod trails, and early echinoderms.
• Plant Fossils At The La Porte Hydraulic Gold Mine, California: Journey to a long-abandoned hydraulic gold mine in the neighborhood of La Porte, northern Sierra Nevada, California, to explore the upper Eocene La Porte Tuff, which yields some 43 species of Cenozoic plants, mainly a bounty of beautifully preserved leaves 34.2 million years old.
• A Visit To Ammonite Canyon, Nevada: Explore one of the best-exposed, most complete fossiliferous marine late Triassic through early Jurassic geologic sections in the world--a place where the important end-time Triassic mass extinction has been preserved in the paleontological record. Lots of key species of ammonites, brachiopods, corals, gastropods and pelecypods.
• Fossil Plants At The Chalk Bluff Hydraulic Gold Mine, California: Take a field trip to the Chalk Bluff hydraulic gold mine, western foothills of California's Sierra Nevada, for leaves, seeds, flowering structures, and petrified wood from some 70 species of middle Eocene plants.
• Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California: Visit a locality outside the southern sector of Death Valley National Park to explore a paleontological wonderland that produces: Precambrian stromatolites over a billion years old; early skeletonized eukaryotic cells of testate amoebae over three-quarters of billion years old; early Cambrian trilobites, archaeocyathids, annelid trails, arthropod tracks, and echinoderm material; Pliocene-Pleistocene vertebrate and invertebrate faunas; and late middle Miocene camel tracks, petrified palm wood, petrified dicotlyedon wood, and permineralized grasses.
• Fossils In Millard County, Utah: Take virtual field trips to two world-famous fossil localities in Millard County, Utah--Wheeler Amphitheater in the trilobite-bearing middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale; and Fossil Mountain in the brachiopod-ostracod-gastropod-echinoderm-trilobite rich lower Ordovician Pogonip Group.
• Fossil Plants, Insects And Frogs In The Vicinity Of Virginia City, Nevada: Journey to a western Nevada badlands district near Virginia City and the Comstock Lode to discover a bonanza of paleontology in the late middle Miocene Coal Valley Formation.
• Paleozoic Era Fossils At Mazourka Canyon, Inyo County, California: Visit a productive Paleozoic Era fossil-bearing area near Independence, California--along the east side of California's Owens Valley, with the great Sierra Nevada as a dramatic backdrop--a paleontologically fascinating place that yields a great assortment of invertebrate animals.
• Late Triassic Ichthyosaur And Invertebrate Fossils In Nevada: Journey to two classic, world-famous fossil localities in the Upper Triassic Luning Formation of Nevada--Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park and Coral Reef Canyon. At Berlin-Ichthyosaur, observe in-situ the remains of several gigantic ichthyosaur skeletons preserved in a fossil quarry; then head out into the hills, outside the state park, to find plentiful pelecypods, gastropods, brachiopods and ammonoids. At Coral Reef Canyon, find an amazing abundance of corals, sponges, brachiopods, echinoids (sea urchins), pelecypods, gastropods, belemnites and ammonoids.
• Fossils From The Kettleman Hills, California: Visit one of California's premiere Pliocene-age (approximately 4.5 to 2.0 million years old) fossil localities--the Kettleman Hills, which lie along the western edge of California's Great Central Valley northwest of Bakersfield. This is where innumerable sand dollars, pectens, oysters, gastropods, "bulbous fish growths" and pelecypods occur in the Etchegoin, San Joaquin and Tulare Formations.
• Field Trip To The Kettleman Hills Fossil District, California: Take a virtual field trip to a classic site on the western side of California's Great Central Valley, roughly 80 miles northwest of Bakersfield, where several Pliocene-age (roughly 4.5 to 2 million years old) geologic rock formations yield a wealth of diverse, abundant fossil material--sand dollars, scallop shells, oysters, gastropods and "bulbous fish growths" (fossil bony tumors--found nowhere else, save the Kettleman Hills), among many other paleontological remains.
• A Visit To The Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed, Southern California: Travel to the dusty hills near Bakersfield, California, along the eastern side of the Great Central Valley in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, to explore the world-famous Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed, a Middle Miocene marine deposit some 16 to 15 million years old that yields over a hundred species of sharks, rays, bony fishes, and sea mammals from a geologic rock formation called the Round Mountain Silt Member of the Temblor Formation; this is the most prolific marine, vertebrate fossil-bearing Middle Miocene deposit in the world.
• In Search Of Fossils In The Tin Mountain Limestone, California: Journey to the Death Valley area of Inyo County, California, to explore the highly fossiliferous Lower Mississippian Tin Mountain Limestone; visit three localities that provide easy access to a roughly 358 million year-old calcium carbate accumulation that contains well preserved corals, brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, and ostracods--among other major groups of invertebrate animals.
• Middle Triassic Ammonoids From Nevada: Travel to a world-famous fossil locality in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada, a specific place that yields some 41 species of ammonoids, in addition to five species of pelecypods and four varieties of belemnites from the Middle Triassic Prida Formation, which is roughly 235 million years old; many paleontologists consider this specific site the single best Middle Triassic, late Anisian Stage ammonoid locality in the world. All told, the Prida Formation yields 68 species of ammonoids spanning the entire Middle Triassic age, or roughly 241 to 227 million years ago.
• Late Miocene Fossil Leaves At Verdi, Washoe County, Nevada: Explore a fascinating fossil leaf locality not far from Reno, Nevada; find 18 species of plants that prove that 5.8 million years ago this part of the western Great Basin Desert would have resembled, floristically, California's lush green Gold Country, from Placerville south to Jackson.
• Fossils Along The Loneliest Road In America: Investigate the extraordinary fossil wealth along some 230 miles of The Loneliest Road In America--US Highway 50 from the vicinity of Eureka, Nevada, to Delta in Millard County, Utah. Includes on-site images and photographs of representative fossils (with detailed explanatory text captions) from every geologic rock deposit I have personally explored in the neighborhood of that stretch of Great Basin asphalt. The paleontologic material ranges in geologic age from the middle Eocene (about 48 million years ago) to middle Cambrian (approximately 505 million years old).
• Fossil Bones In The Coso Range, Inyo County, California: Visit the Coso Range Wilderness, west of Death Valley National Park at the southern end of California's Owens Valley, where vertebrate fossils some 4.8 to 3.0 million years old can be observed in the Pliocene-age Coso Formation: It's a paleontologically significant place that yields many species of mammals, including the remains of Equus simplicidens, the Hagerman Horse, named for its spectacular occurrences at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument in Idaho; Equus simplicidens is considered the earliest known member of the genus Equus, which includes the modern horse and all other equids.
• Field Trip To A Vertebrate Fossil Locality In The Coso Range, California: Take a cyber-visit to the famous bone-bearing Pliocene Coso Formation, Coso Mountains, Inyo County, California; includes detailed text for the field trip, plus on-site images and photographs of vertebrate fossils.
• Fossil Plants At Aldrich Hill, Western Nevada: Take a field trip to western Nevada, in the vicinity of Yerington, to famous Aldrich Hill, where one can collect some 35 species of ancient plants--leaves, seeds and twigs--from the Middle Miocene Aldirch Station Formation, roughly 12 to 13 million years old. Find the leaves of evergreen live oak, willow, and Catalina Ironwood (which today is restricted in its natural habitat solely to the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California), among others, plus the seeds of many kinds of conifers, including spruce; expect to find the twigs of Giant Sequoias, too.
• Fossils From Pleistocene Lake Manix, California: Explore the badlands of the Manix Lake Beds on California's Mojave Desert, an Upper Pleistocene deposit that produces abundant fossil remains from the silts and sands left behind by a great fresh water lake, roughly 350,000 to 19,000 years old--the Manix Beds yield many species of fresh water mollusks (gastropods and pelecypods), skeletal elements from fish (the Tui Mojave Chub and Three-Spine Stickleback), plus roughly 50 species of mammals and birds, many of which can also be found in the incredible, world-famous La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles.
• Field Trip To Pleistocene Lake Manix, California: Go on a virtual field trip to the classic, fossiliferous badlands carved in the Upper Pleistocene Manix Formation, Mojave Desert, California. It's a special place that yields beaucoup fossil remains, including fresh water mollusks, fish (the Mojave Tui Chub), birds and mammals.
• Trilobites In The Nopah Range, Inyo County, California: Travel to a locality well outside the boundaries of Death Valley National Park to collect trilobites in the Lower Cambrian Pyramid Shale Member of the Carrara Formation.
• Ammonoids At Union Wash, California: Explore ammonoid-rich Union Wash near Lone Pine, California, in the shadows of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. Union Wash is a ne plus ultra place to find Early Triassic ammonoids in California. The extinct cephalopods occur in abundance in the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation, with the dramatic back-drop of the glacier-gouged Sierra Nevada skyline in view to the immediate west.
• A Visit To The Fossil Beds At Union Wash, Inyo County California: A virtual field trip to the fabulous ammonoid accumulations in the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation, Inyo County, California--situated in the shadows of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States.
• Ordovician Fossils At The Great Beatty Mudmound, Nevada: Visit a classic 475-million-year-old fossil locality in the vicinity of Beatty, Nevada, only a few miles east of Death Valley National Park; here, the fossils occur in the Middle Ordovician Antelope Valley Limestone at a prominent Mudmound/Biohern. Lots of fossils can be found there, including silicified brachiopods, trilobites, nautiloids, echinoderms, bryozoans, ostracodes and conodonts.
• Paleobotanical Field Trip To The Sailor Flat Hydraulic Gold Mine, California: Journey on a day of paleobotanical discovery with the FarWest Science Foundation to the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada--to famous Sailor Flat, an abandoned hydraulic gold mine of the mid to late 1800s, where members of the foundation collect fossil leaves from the "chocolate" shales of the Middle Eocene auriferous gravels; all significant specimens go to the archival paleobotanical collections at the University California Museum Of Paleontology in Berkeley.
• Early Cambrian Fossils In Western Nevada: Explore a 518-million-year-old fossil locality several miles north of Death Valley National Park, in Esmeralda County, Nevada, where the Lower Cambrian Harkless Formation yields the largest single assemblage of Early Cambrian trilobites yet described from a specific fossil locality in North America; the locality also yields archeocyathids (an extinct sponge), plus salterella (the "ice-cream cone fossil"--an extinct conical animal placed into its own unique phylum, called Agmata), brachiopods and invertebrate tracks and trails.
• Fossil Leaves And Seeds In West-Central Nevada: Take a field trip to the Middlegate Hills area in west-central Nevada. It's a place where the Middle Miocene Middlegate Formation provides paleobotany enthusiasts with some 64 species of fossil plant remains, including the leaves of evergreen live oak, tanbark oak, bigleaf maple, and paper birch--plus the twigs of giant sequoias and the winged seeds from a spruce.
• Ordovician Fossils In The Toquima Range, Nevada: Explore the Toquima Range in central Nevada--a locality that yields abundant graptolites in the Lower to Middle Ordovician Vinini Formation, plus a diverse fauna of brachiopods, sponges, bryozoans, echinoderms and ostracodes from the Middle Ordovician Antelope Valley Limestone.
• Fossil Plants In The Dead Camel Range, Nevada: Visit a remote site in the vicinity of Fallon, Nevada, where the Middle Miocene Desert Peak Formation provides paleobotany enthusiasts with 22 species of nicely preserved leaves from a variety of deciduous trees and evergreen live oaks, in addition to samaras (winged seeds), needles and twigs from several types of conifers.
• Early Triassic Ammonoid Fossils In Nevada: Visit the two remote localities in Nevada that yield abundant, well-preserved ammonoids in the Lower Triassic Thaynes Formation, some 240 million years old--one of the sites just happens to be the single finest Early Triassic ammonoid locality in North America.
• Fossil Plants At Buffalo Canyon, Nevada: Explore the wilds of west-central Nevada, a number of miles from Fallon, where the Middle Miocene Buffalo Canyon Formation yields to seekers of paleontology some 54 species of deciduous and coniferous varieties of 15-million-year-old leaves, seeds and twigs from such varieties as spruce, fir, pine, ash, maple, zelkova, willow and evergreen live oak
• High Inyo Mountains Fossils, California: Take a ride to the crest of the High Inyo Mountains to find abundant ammonoids and pelecypods--plus, some shark teeth and terrestrial plants in the Upper Mississippian Chainman Shale, roughly 325 million years old.
• Field Trip To The Copper Basin Fossil Flora, Nevada: Visit a remote region in Nevada, where the Late Eocene Dead Horse Tuff provides seekers of paleobotany with some 42 species of ancient plants, roughly 39 to 40 million years old, including the leaves of alder, tanbark oak, Oregon grape and sassafras.
• Fossil Plants And Insects At Bull Run, Nevada: Head into the deep backcountry of Nevada to collect fossils from the famous Late Eocene Chicken Creek Formation, which yields, in addition to abundant fossil fly larvae, a paleobotanically wonderful association of winged seeds and fascicles (bundles of needles) from many species of conifers, including fir, pine, spruce, larch, hemlock and cypress. The plants are some 37 million old and represent an essentially pure montane conifer forest, one of the very few such fossil occurrences in the Tertiary Period of the United States.
• A Visit To The Early Cambrian Waucoba Spring Geologic Section, California: Journey to the northwestern sector of Death Valley National Park to explore the classic, world-famous Waucoba Spring Early Cambrian geologic section, first described by the pioneering paleontologist C.D. Walcott in the late 1800s; surprisingly well preserved 540-510 million-year-old remains of trilobites, invertebrate tracks and trails, Girvanella algal oncolites and archeocyathids (an extinct variety of sponge) can be observed in situ.
• Petrified Wood From The Shinarump Conglomerate: An image of a chunk of petrified wood I collected from the Upper Triassic Shinarump Conglomerate, outside of Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado.
• Fossil Giant Sequoia Foliage From Nevada: Images of the youngest fossil foliage from a giant sequoia ever discovered in the geologic record--the specimen is Lower Pliocene in geologic age, around 5 million years old.
• Some Favorite Fossil Brachiopods Of Mine: Images of several fossil brachiopods I have collected over the years from Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic-age rocks.
• For information on what can and cannot be collected legally from America's Public Lands, take a look at Fossils On America's Public Lands and Collecting On Public Lands--brochures that the Bureau Of Land Management has allowed me to transcribe.
• In Search Of Vanished Ages--Field Trips To Fossil Localities In California, Nevada, And Utah--My fossils-related field trips in full print book form (pdf). 98,703 words (equivalent to a medium-size hard cover work of non-fiction); 250 printed pages (equivalent to about 380 pages in hard cover book form); 27 chapters; 30 individual field trips to places of paleontological interest; 60 photographs--representative on-site images and pictures of fossils from each locality visited.

• United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 264-J: Fossils Birds From Manix Lake California, by Hildegarde Howard.
• United States Geological Survey Bulletin 1928: Stratigraphy of the Lower And Middle(?) Triassic Union Wash Formation, East-Central California by Paul Stone, Calvin H. Stevens, and Michael J. Orchard.
• United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 483-F: An Unusual Lower Cambrian Trilobite Fauna From Nevada by Allison R. Palmer.
• United States Geological Survey Bulletin 1527: Age Of The Coso Formation, Inyo County, California by C. R. Bacon, D. M. Giovannetti, W. A. Duffield, W. A. Dalrymple and R. E. Drake.