Not directly related to Death Valley, obviously,, but rather recently I uploaded to
inyo2.coffeecup.com/fossilvalley/fossilvalley.html
my latest paleontology-related web page about a region over in neighboring Nevada, entitled
A Visit To Fossil Valley, Great Basin Desert, Nevada
. Includes detailed text; images of fossils; and on-site photographs, as well.
It's cyber-visit to a world-famous desert district situated in Nevada's Great Basin geomorphic province that contains the most complete, diverse, terrestrial (land-laid) fossil record of Miocene life yet discovered in North America--and perhaps the world, as a matter of fact--a genuinely spectacular paleontological place that produces from the middle Miocene Esmeralda Formation an astounding association of well-preserved fossil material some 16.4 to 10.5 million years old, including: insects (preserved in exquisite detail along the bedding planes of very thinly stratified sedimentary rocks commonly called "paper shales"); plants (leaves, seeds, flowering structures, conifer needles and foliage, diatoms--a microscopic single-celled photosynthesizing aquatic plant that constructed silica "shells"/frustules--pollens, and petrified woods); stromatolitic, cyanobacterial blue-green algal developments; mollusks (gastropods and pelecypods); ostracods (a bivalve crustacean); mammals; birds; fish; amphibians; turtles; and arachnids (spiders).
