These pictures are from the huge landslide that has yielded all the amazing fossils I am illustrating lately.  It was in this slow churning slurry that the Diatryma footprints were found on a slab…making history!  Also tree ferns, palms, tapir tracks, heron tracks…a detailed account of a tropical universe that existed here 50 million years ago.

My friend George and I were there when it was fully raining, and although you wouldn’t think that it was an opportune time, the wetness on the rocks made everything much more visible.

There were fossil plants EVERYWHERE.

What was overwhelming and sad was the toll the shale was taking by being exposed to the elements.  Just sloppily crumbling in your hand at the slightest jostle.  Incredible fossils all around you, exposed for this instant in time only to be reabsorbed back into the earth this winter.

It was one of the tippy-top geologic moments in my life to see all this first hand.  I have to go back!  But it might be under snow for now…