8/23/08 - Mann's Campground, near Manilla, Utah

We updated the blog this morning, took showers, and then hooked up and drove to Fossil Butte National Monument, near Kemmerer, Wyoming. This area has an outcropping of limestone shale known as the Green River Formation from old lakes dating back 50 million years ago to the Cenozoic Era. It contains fossils that are among the most perfectly preserved remains of ancient plant and animal life in the world. We went to the visitor’s center that has examples of the fossils that have been extracted from the butte. Some of these included fish that were in the process of eating other fish when they died and later became fossilized. We saw a lady meticulously cleaning limestone matrix from around the fossilized bones of a fish. Then we took a hike up to an area where two college students working on their degrees were excavating fossils from the side of the butte. They showed us a fish fossil they had just extracted. Half of the fossil was still in the ground and the other half was removed (see picture). We left and drove to a campsite in the Flaming Gorge Recreational Area in northern Utah. We have been in three states today.