NPS Paleontology Roundup

In honor of the return of the Park Paleontology newsletter, I thought I'd do a roundup of some recent articles that discuss fossils from NPS lands. First, though, a word about the newsletter itself. The original incarnation was published from 1998 to 2004, and its archives can be accessed here [note, 2017/06/27: no longer available]. It was intended for brief communications about various topics relevant to NPS paleontology, from new finds, to new staff, to new legislation. The new edition follows in that tradition, with articles on a new exhibit at Big Bend National Park, type specimens from NPS units (yet again, sorry), Emily Thorpe's work at Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, which I plugged last post, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument's new Chief Paleontologist Nick Famoso, dinosaur tracks at Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, and the history of the newsletter itself. If you're curious, yes, the number of fossil species named/possibly named/etc. from NPS units is now at 4,922, thanks in part to the subject of the heading immediately after the jump.

The part and counterpart of University of Minnesota Paleontology Collections 4090, holotype of graptolite Dictyonema minnesotense Ruedemann 1933, collected from the St. Lawrence Formation at a no-longer extant site in Afton, Minnesota, now within Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway.

Death Valley National Park geology, Part IV: Neogene and Quaternary

Very low-level photo across the salt flats of Badwater

...And finally we reach the top of the stratigraphic column at Death Valley National Park (DEVA). For convenience, here are the links to Parts I, II, and III. A lot of geologists just love the most recent 23 or so million years of Death Valley geology. For one thing, it gives people fantastic fodder for arguments about when various events happened, their extent, and even the basic mechanisms. DEVA features not only the pull-apart tectonics of the Basin and Range, but also lateral movements on strike-slip faults. As a result, there are depositional basins of a wide range of sizes. Terminology is a bit of a nightmare. The Wiki page on Death Valley geology isn't bad, but its strat column isn't a patch on the glorious Cenozoic complexity lurking in the park.

Death Valley National Park geology, Part III: Mesozoic through Paleogene

We made it out of the Precambrian. We made it out of the Paleozoic. We aren't nearly out of Death Valley, though. There's still about 250 million years to go, during which the valley was converted from marine property to land, became gently toasted by massive subterranean plutons, and was eventually pulled apart into the modern topography over about 15-20 million years of nonstop faulting, with volcanic eruptions and inland lakes thrown in for variety.

Death Valley National Park geology, Part II: Cambrian through Permian

When we left Death Valley National Park (DEVA) last week, we'd gotten partway through the Cambrian, into the early stages of a passive continental margin with shallow marine deposition. We return to find that predictable shallow marine deposition held sway until fairly late in the Paleozoic, when things got complicated in a hurry.

Death Valley National Park geology, Part I: Proterozoic to Cambrian

As I mentioned a few months ago, one of the main components of my day job over the past few years has been preparing paleontological resource summaries for National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring networks. Between new and updated summaries, I've completed ten (Greater Yellowstone, Mediterranean Coast, Northern Colorado Plateau, Northern Great Plains, Northeast Coastal and Barrier, Northeast Temperate, Sonoran Desert, Southeast Coast, Southern Colorado Plateau, and Southern Plains). Each network has its own foibles and presents different challenges. Some are much more easily tackled than others; smaller parks generally have less to worry about than larger parks, with small urban cultural or historical units usually being the simplest. After finishing the Southern Plains Network last spring, I knew that the Mojave Desert Network (MOJN) would be one of the obvious candidates for the next project. It was completed under a superseded format, so it was already in the hopper, and we were already working with Death Valley National Park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area, so the iron was hot. The attraction for me was the challenge. The MOJN parks have superb geological records exposed by the combination of Basin and Range faulting and restricted plant cover, and they cover vast areas.

A tale of two packrat species

This is Neotoma cinerea, the bushy-tailed packrat:

From Oregon Caves via Wikimedia Commons.