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FLORISSANT FOSSIL BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT Teller County |
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
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)
FOSSIL LEAVES & PLANTS from FLORISSANT, COLORADO
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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 |
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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 |
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unidentified 09 |
Possibly a Dentate Quercus (Canyon Live Oak) 10 |
unidentified 11 |
Cedrelospermum 12 |
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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 |
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unidentified tree leaf 17 |
Possibly Cladphlebis (Fern) 18 |
Possibly a Caesalpina (divi-divi tree) 19 |
Possibly a Lanceolate Salix (Black Willow) 20 |
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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 |
A FOSSIL FISH from FLORISSANT, COLORADO
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Fossil fish found along roadside near Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument |
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