A few months ago, I wrote an eclipse diary that told of my family’s experience of totality out in Wyoming. I still go back and read that one every once in a while, because the total eclipse was so great. And before I get to my topic here, I have one more thing to say about that! We saw the eclipse from Guernsey State Park, and during totality, we saw a jet fly directly across the disk of the moon, which just added another awe-inspiring moment. Months later, I found that someone down in the town of Guernsey, just to our south, had taken a picture of this, and here it is:
We were just to the north of this, and so the jet from our perspective went right across the center. We felt even luckier than we already had.
Anyway, I mentioned in that last diary that we’d continued on to Colorado, and on August 25 we chanced upon the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. I had never heard of it before the trip, but it seemed like it might be kind of interesting because they’d also have a Night Sky program that night.
So we drove from Colorado Springs (a very fun place in its own right) over to Florissant, a tiny town in which we got our dinner at the Subway within the gas station, because that was pretty much the only place to eat.
We spent the day hiking around the National Monument and seeing petrified seqouia stumps that had been preserved by lava flows, many of which were removed or greatly reduced by eager tourists of the 20th century before the area was protected. There was also a long-dry lake bed containing shale with numerous fossils, although the public is not allowed to dig them up. There were some periodic volcanic eruptions in the area 34 million years ago, and the ash would cover the lake, settle to the bottom, and preserve whatever happened to be on the lake’s surface at the time.
After hiking, there was still some time to kill before the Night Sky program, and on the way into the park, the kids had noticed a quarry down the road where you could supposedly dig up your own fossils, and they wanted to check it out. Sure, we thought, we’ll humor them for a while at this place that is probably a rip-off.
Well.
We got there just as the quarry was closing. There was one couple there eagerly chopping away at some rocks at a picnic table. The lady in charge talked to us for a bit and said she had to go but sold us a bag of shale for twenty bucks. Threw in a couple of extra rocks, too. She explained how to split the shale open with a razor blade or putty knife. So we then went to the Ace Hardware in Florissant and got ourselves a putty knife. We went back to the Fossil Beds to hang out and eat our Subway sandwiches, but my daughter really wanted to crack open a piece of shale. So we got that bag out of the back of the minivan, and she got to splitting one of the extra rocks the lady threw in.
And I’ll be …
Neither of us could believe our eyes. That’s just a section of the rock, which was patterned like wallpaper with some kind of plant. Impression fossils and a fair number with carbonaceous material as well. My daughter and I ran into the park center and showed the rangers what we’d found, and they were excited too. They got a manual out and helped us identify the closest plant among photographs of other fossils, and we decided it was most likely Prosopis, a legume plant.
In the days that followed, we also found a few other things in the bag of shale, including this:
Is that beautiful or what?
And also, of course, the winged ant you see at the top of the page. How do I know this is a winged ant? I emailed the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and they were kind enough to guide me to a man now at Oxford named Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, who is the paleoentomologist (caution: i may have just made up a word there) who had assembled the Harvard catalog of insect fossils. And he was as nice as you can imagine, and he helped us identify our insect as a winged ant for this reason:
If you look at our little fossil bug under a magnifying glass, you do indeed see the little square and the little X. Among ants that wound up fossilized at Florissant, most are winged, because those are the ones who could end up on the lake’s surface, because they could fly. Our little ant did that 34 million years ago, right before volcanic ash buried it. But was that ant lost forever? Nope. That’s a famous ant now.
We’re still trying to figure out how best to display our famous ant and sequoia and Prosopis so that other people can enjoy them as much as we have.
Needless to say, if you are ever near Florissant, Colorado, go to the quarry. You will be amazed at how fascinating splitting shale with a putty knife suddenly becomes. That was about the best twenty bucks I think I ever spent.
Well, THEN we had the Night Sky program, at which a bunch of amateur astronomers brought their huge telescopes, and we saw great views of the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, nebulas, globular clusters, and galaxies. We also got a tour of the constellations from another astronomer, and of course it was so dark you could see the Milky Way spreading across the sky. Another perfectly cloudless night, just like the day of the eclipse. My kids were fascinated by the whole thing, and so were my wife and I.
As we got back to the hotel and went to sleep, I felt overwhelmed by how amazing our day (and our week) had been. And I still am.