HOME PAGE
MASTER INDEX
COLORADO
FLORISSANT
PLACES & TRIPS

FLORISSANT FOSSIL BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT
Teller County


This is a plate of fossils from the Florissant, Colorado area The wood fossils are virtually still wood after 35,000,000 years	This eART SCAN shows how small the insect fossils are If you click on this eART SCAN you can see how detailed each insect is, on a full page	A group of Plant and Insect Fossils from Florissant, Colorado near the Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument

Welcome to the Proctor Museum of Natural Science "INFORMATION SECTION" on the Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument which is located in Teller County, Colorado. Colorado Springs is about 45 minutes to the East of Florissant, on U.S. Highway 24.

Florissant is located in the heart of Colorado. Coming from the East out of Kansas on I.H. 70, you veer Southwest on U.S. Highway 24 into Colorado Springs, Colorado and continue about 45 minutes West until you come to the small town of Florissant, Colorado. Turning South at the signs to the Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument, you will pass "Nature's Treasures" on the West which is a public digging for fee location, where one may find on occasions very good quality insect and leaf fossils.

After you enter the Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument, there is NO DIGGING allowed. At the tourist center, you can see examples of excellent insect and plant fossils on display. You can also take a couple of tours through the grounds and see the remains of huge Red woods which once grew in Florissant, until they were inundated with a flood of volcanic ash which suffocated and buried them high on their trunks. The tops deteriorated, but the trunks and bases fossilized and remained until discovered in the past few hundred years. Some remain, but others were cut out as souvenirs. One of the trunks today has a saw blade stuck in it where there was an attempt to remove it to take to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1939.

It is amazing to see these insects and leaves under a magnifying glass. Many of the insects are perfect to their legs, antennae, and the leaves to their veins and every portion of the leaf.

Now for some samples of the types of insects
which you can find near the
Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument
at a location called "Nature's Treasure"
where you can pay to dig fossils.

FOSSIL INSECTS from FLORISSANT, COLORADO


Possibly a Tsetse Fly 02	Possibly an ant or stinging insect 03	Possibly some type of fly 04	Possibly some type of fly 05

Possibly a Robber Fly 06	Possibly a midge 07	Probably a stinging insect 08	Possibly an ant or wasp 09

Some type of beetle 10	Flying insect--see other half to the right 11	Flying insect--see other half to the left 12	Beetle--see other half below 13

Possibly a Robber fly 15	Possibly a bee or a wasp 16	Probably a bee or wasp 17	Beetle--see other half above 14

Believed to be a mosquito 18	Difficult to say probably a beetle 19	Probably some type of wasp or other stinging insect 20	Could be some type of moth 21

Probably the nymphs of some type of stinging insect 22	Beetle both sides 23	More to come 24	More to come 25

Dr. Terry Proctor collected all of the above insect fossils during several trips to the Florissant, Colorado area. Most came from Nature's Treasure, a commercial dig site where you can pay to dig. Others came from a ranch where the landowner graciously allowed Terry and his party to dig.

Fossils are being identified and until some semblance of accurate identification is completed, only numbers are being used herein. There are over 7,900 specimens on a national data bank and that information is available at a website by the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and the site is http://planning.nps.gov/flfo/tax3_Result.cfm. (19 Feb'04 this appears to be a bad link at present)

Shortly we will be scanning our collection of fossil leaves, plants and a fish to include on this page. Thank you for your patience while we complete the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument Page.

FOSSIL LEAVES & PLANTS from FLORISSANT, COLORADO


Some type of fern 01	Possibly Attenuate Salix (Black Willow) Note the very pointed end to the leaf 02	Possibly a Betula (Birch) 03	Two opposing sides of a piece of conifer twig? or perhaps fern 04

Fagopsis Beech and Oak Family of trees 05	Probably also a Fagopsis 06	Possibly a Lanceolate Salix (Black Willow) 07	Possibly Chamaecyparis (White Cedar) 08

unidentified 09	Possibly a Dentate Quercus (Canyon Live Oak) 10	unidentified 11	Cedrelospermum 12

Unidentified tree leaf 13	Probably also a Fagopsis leaf {note insect to the right} 14	Possibly something like underground threads such as mushrooms or other roots of plants 15	A twig from an unidentified shrub or tree 16

unidentified tree leaf 17	Possibly Cladphlebis (Fern) 18	Possibly a Caesalpina (divi-divi tree) 19	Possibly a Lanceolate Salix (Black Willow) 20

unidentified at present 21	Possible Cercocarpus (Mountain Mahogany) 22	This is a leaf from 2001--found lying in the detritus of the yard showing how veins are left as the surface of the leaf deteriorates 23	24