Click on the image for a larger picture. A view northeast across the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, to Stearns Wharf and Santa Barbara's Montecito district (hills near center), with the Santa Ynez Mountains along skyline. Photograph courtesy Eric Foote, 2014; I edited and processed the image through photoshop.

Santa Barbara, California, is the place to visit to investigate the appropriately named middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, which yields nearly 300 species of Ice Age mollusks (gastropods, pectens, oysters, clams, cockles, chitons, scaphopods, and mussels); brachiopods; bryozoans; corals; ostracods (a diminutive bivalve crustacean); algae; and worm tubes--plus, over a hundred species of foraminifera.

Three representative fossil specimens from the marine middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California. At left is an extinct pelecypod (bivalve) pecten called, Chlamys opuntia; it's 5.0 cm in length--two inches long. I collected it from exposures along a county road in Santa Barbara, California. I originally photographed the scallop shell with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Middle fossil is a gastropod mollusk called Crossata californica; 66.7 mm in length--2.63 inches long. Photograph courtesy Mr. Phil Liff-Grieff, who collected the specimen from world-famous Ice Age Fossil Hill in Santa Barbara County, California; I edited and processed the image through photoshop.

At right is an extinct pelecypod clam referred to Cyclocardia californica, from a locality in Santa Barbara, California. It's 2.0 cm in width--0.78 inch wide. Photograph courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed the image through photoshop.

Santa Barbara is an internationally renowned attraction located along the coast of Southern California approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles. For decades the community has served as an ideal environment for assorted celebrities and other folks looking for a pleasurable get-away. Its climate has been liberally praised by those who ought to know, the jet-setters, as one of the very best in the world, and its jewel-like setting along a fertile plain between a breathtaking expanse of the Pacific Ocean and a rugged backdrop of the chaparral-coated Santa Ynez Mountains contributes to the impressive scenic reputation of the area.

Santa Barbara obviously has no need of "hype." It is a rare and special paradise. But, what makes it even more attractive to many is the abundance of well-preserved fossils that can be found throughout the region.

For example, among its many undeniable paleontological charms, the Santa Barbara area is especially rich in Ice Age fossils. The appropriately named middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation (first described and then named in the technical scientific literature for its most typical exposures in Santa Barbara) just happens to yield one of the largest and best preserved marine Pleistocene invertebrate faunas on the US West Coast. It's a really huge fauna, indeed, with approximately 400 taxa thus far identified: 91 bivalve molluscan forms (AKA, the pelecypods--or, the Lamillebranchia of older taxonomical terminology) such as pectens, clams, cockles, oysters, and mussels; 173 gastropods (the snails); 6 chitons; 3 scaphopods; pteropods; brachiopods; bryozoans; corals; ostracods (minute bivalve crustaceans); worm tubes; and around 102 species of foraminifers (minute shells with geometrically intricate internal structures, secreted by a single-celled organism--usually considered microfossils). Current geochronological considerations place the Santa Barbara Formation at approximately 1.2 million to 400,000 years old--although most of the world-class fossil occurrences lie between 1,000,000 to 750,000 years old (middle Pleistocene in geologic age).

Within the city limits of Santa Barbara, surface exposures of the Santa Barbara Formation rarely exceed 500 feet thick; yet, subsurface analyses demonstrate that, cumulatively, sedimentary deposition amassed an aggregate of well over 2,000 feet of marine-originated sands, silts, muds, and marls that, above-ground, contain locally abundant and often extraordinarily well-preserved invertebrate animals whose modern-day representatives, as a general rule, reside in marine environments significantly cooler than those off the coast of southern California today.

The most classically fossiliferous outcrops of the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation can be observed at a number of sensational sites--namely: (1) The type locality, positioned amidst the community of Santa Barbara--where of course geologists first named and described the Santa Barbara Formation in a peer-reviewed scientific document (yields beaucoup pectens, clams, gastropods, and bryozoans); (2) "Foram Avenue" (a colloquial name)--a roadcut along a residential street in Santa Barbara, where paleontologists have not only identified some 102 species of foraminifera, but also loads of quality, identifiable pelecypods and gastropods; (3) The County Road--an informal title given to a specific street in Santa Barbara that yields astounding quantities of bryozoan "twigs," pecten shells, gastropods, and brachiopods; and (4)--The paleontological crown jewel of the Santa Barbara Formation, a place often referred to as Ice Age Fossil Hill, in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, within Santa Barbara County--a world-famous site that in addition to yielding 59 species of pelecypodal bivalves and 120 kinds of gastropods from some 25 separate fossiliferous beds, also produces numerous bryozoans, corals, brachiopods, worm tubes, ostracods (a diminutive bivalve crustacean), foraminifers, and algal developments from a roughly 300 foot-thick section of muddy to silty sedimentary detrital constituents deposited primarily in a shallow subtidal paleo-marine environment some one million years ago during the middle Pleistocene epoch; the vast majority of extant mollusks recovered from Ice Age Fossil Hill lived in waters from 20 to 40 m (65 to 98 feet) deep.

A number of years ago, while I lived in Santa Barbara, California, I happened to independently discover the spectacular fossil locality that not a few folks now call Ice Age Fossil Hill. As a matter of fact, that was such a powerfully exhilarating and rewarding paleontological experience that happily, to commemorate the event, I actually wrote a contemporaneous account of it in one of my field notebooks that I fortuitously rediscovered not too long ago (I thought I'd long-lost it, interestingly enough). I've transcribed that entry herein, in quotes:

"January 30: This afternoon, I discovered the best Pleistocene fossil locality I have ever seen, and quite possibly the best fossil locality period--in terms, that is, of abundance, variety and preservation of specimens; for here, sketching along the road and opposite side of the hill, occur several mollusk horizons in weakly consolidated brown to yellow-gray sand and silt. Successive strata contain a wide variety of specimens well preserved, and in an hour and a half's time I collected no less than 15 different species without the aid of paleontology equipment. I merely plucked fossils from the soft sandy Pleistocene formation (it's either the Ventura Sand or Santa Barbara formation, lower Pleistocene in geologic age). The lowermost fossiliferous stratum that I saw contained abundant pecten specimens; (thin-shelled Pecten bellus?) that might mark the Pleistocene-Pliocene boundary. This entire assemblage is similar in variety to the famed Palos Verdes Sand and the related formation, the San Pedro Sand, because I've found in all three such excellently preserved fossils as Conus californicus, Olivia, Pecten, etc.--typical Pleistocene forms that inhabited an ocean slightly colder than our present Pacific.

"I'd like to return well-prepared for paleontology: to have with me a back pack, rock hammer (geology pick), plastic bags, tissue paper (for wrapping delicate specimens), notebook, pencil, and my formal biology kit which contains sharp dissecting needles (good for probing in soft sand, for picking dirt away from easily fractured forms), and probes (these possess sturdier needles that remove compacted sands and silt better than the dissecting variety). When next I visit the unbelievable exposure, I'll bring these valuable tools and conduct more scientific explorations. Armed with beneficial paleontological tools, I should be able to free some of the more fragile specimens embedded in hard sand.

"I can't help but compare this locality with one of the most famous fossil localities in the United States--a street-level exposure of Palos Verdes Sand in San Pedro, where thousands of perfectly preserved mollusks erode from a narrow strip of ancient ocean sand. The fossiliferous seam is covered by a thin veneer of younger reddish alluvium, in which the bones of Pleistocene mammals and birds have occasionally been found. At my new locality, there is not one rich horizon, but several outstanding ones and their specimens are just as unusually well preserved. It's almost as if you were holding a shell that only yesterday had been buried on the beach.

"One could spend much time there collecting specimens from the ascending fossil strata--making a scientific study of them, determining the ages of each horizon and the fauna they contain. It would make a fine project, I think. And the hill's thickness is easily determined--its dip and strike of strata, also. They dip generally northward, though for true accuracy I'd need a Brunton compass, a remarkable geological tool.

"I don't know exactly why I decided to stop off there. For a long while I had wanted to examine some of the sedimentary formations exposed along that route, but had never put my desires into action--until today. Sort of on the spur-of-the-moment I left my main route and discovered the abundance of Pleistocene fossils weathering free. To collect them was easy and fun and I could at this moment --12:20 am--return."

And so began my long-term paleontological infatuation with Ice Age Fossil Hill. Throughout my stay in Santa Barbara, I occasionally visited the locality and eventually amassed quite a representative selection of molluscan, byrozoan, coraline, foraminiferal, and even brachiopodal material from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation.

In addition to the justifiably famous Ice Age fossil occurrences in the Santa Barbara Formation, a number of other Pleistocene geologic deposits in the vicinity of Santa Barbara also yield diagnostic fossil assemblages. One accessible and notably fossiliferous section can be examined at an emergent marine terrace, roughly 47,000 years old (late Pleistocene in geologic age), which yields an open-coast invertebrate fauna consisting of approximately 125 taxa, including 102 mollusks (bivalve pelecypods and gastropods), 18 foraminifers, and a solitary coral--Balanophyllia elegans.

Several such fossiliferous Pleistocene emergent marine terraces can be examined along the coast of Southern California (the Palos Verdes-San Pedro district of Los Angeles for one, of course, yields a world-class assemblage of late Pleistocene invertebrate paleontology). They're created when, first-off, an interglacial period of world-wide atmospheric cooling locks up great quantities of oceanic water as polar ice. That causes the sea level to drop along the coast, exposing land and whatever invertebrate animal life happened to live in the intertidal zone. After that, if the environmental conditions are just right, detritus carried by rivers and streams and alluvial processes eventually buries the area now left high and dry, preserving in often exquisite detail the many evidences of marine Pleistocene animal life within. Once the interglacial period is over--the Santa Barbara marine terrace, by the way, was created during what stratigraphers call the Wisconsinan Glaciation Episode about 47,000 years ago--when polar ice melts and sea levels concomitantly begin to rise, you then need geophysical tectonic activity to gradually elevate the block/ledge of marine invertebrates now submerged beneath the very sea waters in which they originally lived. When the old sea bed finally reemerges from the ocean, a marine terrace is born and is once again subjected to erosion and, possibly, additional processes of terrestrial sedimentary deposition.

A second site of exceptional Ice Age paleontology occurs on Santa Rosa Island, Channel Islands National Park, off the coast of Santa Barbara, where the remains of a dwarf mammoth occur in late Pleistocene terrestrial detritus (recommendation: when in Santa Barbara, visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where several skeletal elements from "Rosy" the dwarf mammoth are on display). A number of the Channel Islands also reveal evidence of Pleistocene marine terraces, loaded with abundant significant Ice Age invertebrate remains.

A third Ice Age spot of note lies several miles south of Santa Barbara, proper, in the vicinity of Carpentaria, Santa Barbara County--the renowned Carpenteria Tar Pits, which yielded a faunal assemblage similar to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles; mostly, the Carpenteria brea deposit produced a paucity of rather poorly preserved mammals (a horse and a camel, for example) and some 79 species of birds, including a bald eagle, golden eagle, cooper hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, barn owl, California condor, Merrium’s Teratorn, pelicans, rails, ducks, king birds, western meadow larks, crows, scrub jays, finches, turkeys, road runners, wood peckers, and band-tailed pigeons. Plant remains recovered belong to Monterey pine (cones), Cypress (cones), oak, manzanita, juniper, and fir--all of which suggest that Ice Age Carpenteria probably resembled today's Monterey Peninsula, much farther north along California's coast. The primary scientific conservational problem with the Carperteria Tar Pits is that for decades they were used as a refuse dump--a long-term land status that obliterated the paleontological integrity of the original late Pleistocene deposit.

Not only is Santa Barbara famous for its Ice Age fossil remains, but geologically older Cenozoic Era rock deposits within the general vicinity of the community also contain locally common to abundant paleontolocal preservations.

A good place to start would be the south-facing front of the Santa Ynez Mountains, which form the dramatic backdrop to Santa Barbara immediately north of town (one must note that this is indeed California's "South Coast" area, where with peculiar improbability one must actually travel south--not the assumed traditional direction west--in order to reach the Pacific Ocean). It's comprised primarily of four quite famous marine Eocene-age geologic rock formations that in ascending order of geologic age (oldest to youngest) include: the Juncal Formation; the Matilija Sandstone; the Cozy Dell Shale; and the Coldwater Sandstone, which in turn is overlain by a younger entirely terrestrial geologic rock accumulation called the upper Eocene to Oligocene Sespe Formation.

Although unfossiliferous throughout the Santa Barbara region (save for reworked fragments of oysters derived from the older underlying middle Eocene Coldwater Sandstone), the Sespe Formation exposed in Ventura County, several miles southwest of Ventura (which lies some 35 to 40 miles south of Santa Barbara), yielded one of the largest assemblages of late Eocene to Oligocene mammals west of the Rocky Mountains. The majority of vertebrate remains came from three separate sites: in the general neighborhood of a modern landfill operation; and the noted Pearson Ranch and Kew quarries, both situated on private property in the Las Posas Hills northwest of Thousand Oaks. Vertebrate paleontologists Chester Stock and R.W. Wilson conducted most of the scientific collecting from the Pearson Ranch and Kew quarries during the 1930s and '40s. Among their numerous important finds were large cats, early saber-toothed cats, dogs, a squirrel-like rodent, a squirrel, field mice, rabbits, a small "deerlet," primitive opossums, early insectivores, primitive rodents, an early rhinoceros, a brontothere, a rhinoceros-like animal, a primitive hedgehog, and an early lemur monkey.

Among the marine Eocene units exposed in Santa Barbara's Santa Ynez Range district, the middle Eocene Coldwater Sandstone is probably the best of the bunch for satisfying paleontological explorations; of course, all four formations yield fossil remains in varying degrees of abundance and excellence of preservation. In the Ojai district of neighboring Ventura County, for instance, the Cozy Dell Shale produces spectacular Brittle stars, while the Matilija Sandstone provides paleomalacologists with a large and varied Eocene molluscan fauna.

Through the high resolution methodology of magnetostratigraphy (a reliable technique that allows precise geologic correlations based on the timing of past magnetic reversals in the Earth's poles), the Coldwater Sandstone has been dated with great accuracy at 42.5 to 39.5 million years old. Its upper 1,000 feet of stratigraphic exposure, particularly near the geologic contact with the upper Eocene to Oligocene Sespe Formation, produces prodigious numbers of Ostrea idriaensis and Ostrea tayloriana oysters, plus locally common pelecypodal clams and turritella-type gastropods. While I lived in Santa Barbara several years ago, one of my favorite Coldwater Sandstone fossil haunts was what many local paleontology enthusiasts called the "Coldwater Clam Quarry;" that's where numerous carbonized valves of pelecypods, common turritella gastropods, and even a shark tooth or two could be collected.

Petrologically speaking, sands in the Coldwater Sandstone were deposited into a shallow gradually regressing middle Eocene sea by westward-flowing rivers that drained a granitic terrain--probably the ancestral Sierra Nevada. Too, a rather fascinating geological aside here is that as an integral lithologic member of the Santa Ynez Mountains (which belong to what geographers call the Transverse Ranges of Southern California), the Coldwater Sandstone went along for quite a wild geophysical ride. From roughly mid Miocene to early-late Miocene times--15.2 million to around 10 million years ago--tectonic forces rather rapidly (in a geological sense) rotated the original declination of the ancestral Santa Ynez Range some 56 degrees clockwise; after that, more gradual clockwise rotational movements, until about two million years ago, helped establish the present-day east-west geographic orientation of the Santa Ynez Mountains.

After exploring the middle Eocene Coldwater Sandstone in the southern foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains, fossil seekers might also want to investigate a representative sampling of Santa Barbara's many late Oligocene-Miocene-and Pliocene paleo-treasures. Oldest to youngest, some of the more notable examples include: the upper Oligocene to lower Miocene Vaqueros Formation (produces huge pectens, oysters, and turritella-style gastropods that flourished in warm tropical waters; furnishes many species of shark teeth, too); the middle Miocene Temblor Formation (the same geologic rock unit that preserves the fabulous Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed northeast of Bakersfield, California; in the Santa Barbara region, the Temblor contains large tropical-type gastropods and pelecypods, locally abundant sand dollars, brachiopods, and occasional marine mammal skeletal elements ); the middle to late Miocene Monterey Formation (yields an astounding variety of fossil remains: a plethora of microfossils--foraminifers, diatoms, and radiolaria--seaweeds; whales; sea lions; walruses, bony and cartilaginous fishes; and birds); the middle Miocene Branch Canyon Formation (its so-called "echinoid optimum" zone provides plentiful sand dollars from a pure sandstone paleo-beach interval stratigraphers correlate with diatomaceous shales of the coastal Monterey Formation); the upper Miocene to lower Pliocene Sisquoc Formation (it's an especially rich paleontological zone, preserving the remains of diatoms, radiolarians, arenaceous foraminifers, sponges, and occasional marine mammal bones); the upper Miocene to lower Pliocene Santa Margarita Formation (yields prodigious quantities of barnacles, sizable pectens, clams, echinoids, and a monstrous oyster called appropriately enough, Ostrea titan); and the upper Pliocene Careaga Formation (produces myriads of fantastically well preserved mollusks--bivalve pelecypodal examples, and gastropods--in addition to locally prodigious quantities of exceptional echinoids (sand dollars).

That would constitute but a sampling of paleontological opportunities one could seriously consider exploring in Santa Barbara County. Please note, of course, that all the usual collecting admonitions apply here: Among them--You need explicit written permission from land owners to fossil prospect on private property; you must contact the local United States Forest Service folks to learn their latest official directives regarding unauthorized fossil collecting in the Los Padres National Forest; and, finally, before hiking along trails in the Los Padres National Forest above Santa Barbara, you just might need to purchase an Adventure Pass--it's a wholly local pass often required when exploring by non-mechanized means the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino National Forests of Southern California.

With collecting bona fides properly established through due diligence, one naturally begins to wonder whether specific seasonal meteorological conditions impinge on paleontological exploration activities.

The abbreviated answer is: not a chance. Temperatures remain consistently moderate year-round. And while the region does indeed experience a definite winter-early spring rainy season, fossil hunting in Santa Barbara can be comfortably conducted any time of the year. The community officially averages some 19.41 inches of precipitation per year, and the highest elevations in the neighboring Santa Ynez Mountains (3,800 to 3,900 feet) receive approximately 35 inches of rain annually--including on occasion a dusting of snow.

Of course, when the fossil hunting is finished for the time being--it's certainly time to participate in different forms of entertainment.

Because, obviously, there is much more to experience in Santa Barbara than paleontological investigations, alone. It's a community famously geared toward tourism. A few of the more-popular attractions include: the Botanical Gardens; the Mission (generally considered by a majority of architectural historians as the most aesthetically striking of all the old missions in California); the Museum of Natural History (which boasts an excellent geology section with an educational display of gems and minerals and local fossils); the Santa Barbara courthouse--from whose tower is obtained an outrageously inspiring 360 degree panorama of the city, Santa Ynez Mountains, and Pacific Ocean; and, naturally, the clean gorgeous beaches. There are innumerable eateries, from the inevitable fast food establishments to world-class restaurants--in addition to any number of hotel and motel accommodations.

While all of Santa Barbara's Ice Age fossil localities could theoretically be visited in reconnaissance style in a single afternoon, you'll likely want to spend a few extra days in Santa Barbara to check out the sights. Camping places along the beach--all within 20 to 30 miles of Santa Barbara--include Gaviota, Refugio Beach, El Capitan Beach, and Carpenteria Beach. For camping in the Santa Ynez Mountains, try the Santa Ynez River tract area a few miles south of Lake Cachuma, east of State Route 154, along Paradise Road about 15 miles northwest of Santa Barbara. Here can be found several quality campgrounds, including Fremont, Los Prietos, Lower Oso, Santa Ynez and Redrock.

My favorite time of year in Santa Barbara is fall, when the days are sunny, warm and clear--no dismal chilly fog to speak of--and the nights dazzling with stars, with a moderate crisp coolness to the air. The sunsets over the Pacific are extraordinary in autumn, and while I resided in Santa Barbara a number of years ago I'd sometimes hike to the Coldwater Clam Quarry in late afternoons, timing my fossil hunting to coincide with the glowing spectacle out over the ocean; then when it was too late to find fossils, I'd sit along the edge of the trail, reverent in the presence of the glorious colors of the sinking sun.

In the afterglow of twilight I'd head back down the mountain slope clutching the remains of clams that some 40 million years ago lived in a different ocean--a sea now long-vanished but one which also felt the setting of that same sun.

Click on the image for a larger picture. A pelecypodal pecten (scallop shell) sampler--all collected from exposures of the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California, at Ice Age Fossil Hill and the County Road locality. The Santa Barbara Formation of Santa Barbara County, California, yields one of the largest and best preserved marine Ice Age Pleistocene invertebrate faunas on the US West Coast. It's a really huge fauna, indeed, with innumerable taxa thus far identified: 91 bivalve molluscan forms such as pectens, clams, cockles, oysters, and mussels; 173 gastropods; 6 chitons; 3 scaphopods; brachiopods; bryozoans; corals; pteropods; worm tubes; and around 102 species of foraminifers (minute shells with geometrically intricate internal structures--usually considered microfossils).

For scale--the second pecten from left in top row is five centimeters in length--two inches long. Top row, left to right--Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys jordani; Chlamys hastata; Chlamys jordani; Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys opuntia. Middle row, left to right--Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys jordani; Chlamys islandicus; Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys opuntia. Bottom row, left to right--Chlamys opuntia; Chlamys islandicus; Chlamys hastata; Chlamys hastata; Chlamys jordani; Chlamys opuntia. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Click on the image for a larger picture. A gastropod sampler from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, California. I personally collected all of the specimens from Ice Age Fossil Hill, Santa Barbara County, California. For scale--the olive shell in bottom row, at far left, is 24mm in length--an inch long. Note the cylindrical holes in the specimens in top row; a merciless predatory gastropod, with its specialized radula, is the culprit--penetrating the shell to suck out the meal hidden within. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Top row, left to right--Harfordia robusta; Turritella cooperi; Calicantharus humerosus; Crossata ventricosa; Crossata ventricosa; Calicantharus fortis. Bottom row, left to right--Callianax biplicata; Callianax biplicata; Glossaulax reclusiana; Glossaulax reclusiana; Amphissa versicolor; Lirularias sp.; Architectonica sp. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Click on the image for a larger picture. A pelecypod sampler from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, California. I personally collected all of the specimens from Ice Age Fossil Hill, Santa Barbara County, California. For scale--the clam shell in top row, at far right, is 28.3mm in length from beak (closest to top edge of photograph) to edge of shell--an inch and one-tenth long. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Top row, left to right: Lucinoma annulatum; Cycloardium ventricosa; Cycloardium ventricosa; Lucinoma annulatum. Middle row--Chlamys opuntia; Humilaria perlaminosa; Chlamys opuntia. Bottom row, left to right--Saccella taphria; Macoma nasuta; Saccella taphria. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Click on the image for a larger picture. A sampler of relatively undescribed (in the scientific literature) fossil material from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, California. I personally collected all of the specimens from Ice Age Fossil Hill, Santa Barbara County, California. For scale--the worm tube at far left is 5.5 cm in length--2.16 inches long. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Left to right: Two worm tubes at far left. Top row, left to right--a bryozoan colony; an encrusting bryozoan colony (on a fragmented pelecypod shell); a bryozoan colony; a bryozoan colony. Bottom row, left to right--three corals, Balanophylliae elegans; and two calcium carbonate clusters, precipitated by algae activity. Photograph originally snapped with a Minolta 35mm camera.

Click on the image for a larger picture. Pectens (bivalve pelecypods--also commonly called scallops) from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation of Ice Age Fossil Hill, in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, California; for reference size perspective, that largest pecten at center is two and a half inches across at longest axis. They were collected in 1979 by a very successful field collector named Frank Peska Jr., who spent decades finding paleontological remains in the Southern California area. Photograph courtesy a person who goes by the on-line name of "jenny8837." I edited and processed the picture through photoshop.

Numbers refer to identifications made by Frank Peska Jr.: 1--Pododesmus machrochisma; 2--Hinnites giganteus; 3--Flabillipecten stearsii; 4--Chlamys hastata hericius; 5--Chlamy hastata hastata; 6--Chlamys opuntia; 7--Chlamys anapleus; 8--Chlamys rubida; 9--Patinopecten caurinus; 10--Chlamys cf C. picoensis.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: A pelecypod, Acilaca strensis (the very first fossil specimen I collected from the Santa Barbara Formation was this very genus-species of pelecypod--from the "Foram Avenue" locality; see On-Site images section, above); a gastropod, Alia carinata; a gastropod, Amphissa versicolor. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifth inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: A gastropod, Astyris gausapata; a gastropod, Astyris tuberosa; a barnacle--balanidae. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: A coral, Balanophylliae elegans; a gastropod, Boreotrophon keepi1a; a gastropod--Caesia perpinguis. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all gastropods: Calicantharus fortis; Calicantharus humerosus; Callianax baetica. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all gastropods: Callianax biplicata; Calliostoma annulatum; Cerithiopsidella sp. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all pelecypods: Chama granti; Chlamys hastata; Chlamys jordani. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a pecten--Chlamys opuntia; a pecten--Chlamys picoensis; a gastropod--Chlorostoma gallina. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all gastropods: Crepidula princeps; Crockerella conradiana; Crockerella cymodoce. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a gastropod--Crossata californica; a gastropod--Crossata ventricosa; a pelecypod--Cyclocardia californica. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all pelecypods: Epilucina californica; a pecten--Euvola bella; Glycymeris septentrionalis. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all gastropods: Harfordia robusta; Hima cooperi; Homalopoma berryi. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a gastropod--Homalopoma luridum; a pelecypod--Humilaria perlaminosa; a pelecypod--Kellia suborbicularis. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a pecten-Leopecten stearnsii; a pecten--Leptopecten latiauratus; a gastropod--Lirobittium rugatum. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a gastropod--Lirularia sp; a pelecypod--Lucinoma annulatum; a pelecypod--Macoma nasuta. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a gastropod--Mitra idae; a pelecypod mussel--Mytilus californianus; a gastropopd--Neptunea tabulata. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right--all pelecypods: Nuculana minuta; Nutricola tantilla; a pecten--Patinopecten caurinus. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a pelecypod--Pododesmus macrochisma; an operculum from a gastropod--Pomaulax gibberosa; a pelecypod--Saccella taphria. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

Click on the images for larger pictures. Note centimeter scale bar. Quick metric scale conversion tip: One cm (centimeter) equals two-fifths inch. One mm (millimeter) equals one twenty-fifth of an inch. All from the middle Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, Santa Barbara, California.

Left to right: a gastropod--Stylidium eschrichtii1a; a gastropod--Turritella cooperi; a worm tube. Photographs courtesy the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--from a publicly accessible site; I edited and processed them through photoshop.

• 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 Bartovian 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).
• 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.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.
• High Sierra Nevada Fossil Plants, Alpine County, California: Visit a remote fossil leaf and petrified wood locality in the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude over 8,600 feet, slightly above the local timberline, to find 7 million year-old specimens of cypress, Douglas-fir, White fir, evergreen live oak, and giant sequoia, among others.
• 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.
• 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.

• 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.