The Rockpile Museum Association

thebrainscoop:

The Brain Scoop’s FIELD TRIP!
In Search of Fossil Fish

A few weeks ago, Tom and I got the chance to accompany a group of Field Museum staff, volunteers, and students on a geological dig near Kemmerer, Wyoming - which is, oddly enough, the location of the birthplace and mother store [not a store that sells mothers {disappointment}] of the JC Penney chain.

The area we went to is called Fossil Lake, and beneath the surface it contains the largest and most diverse representation of early Eocene life ever discovered, giving us a picture of what was swimming, flying, and eventually falling into this lake 52-50 million years ago.

Lance Grande - who you’d remember from our episode The Gem Room - has been excavating fish, turtles, birds, insects, and arthropods of every size and shape from this location since the 1970’s, continuing a legacy of research that has been going on in the area for more than 150 years.  

Stay tuned for the upcoming episodes where we’ll explain the ideal conspiring conditions necessary for perfect fossilization, and what happens once we’ve got the fish out of the ground!