Whispers from Deep Time: My Quest for Dinosaur Eggs

 By Steven Wade Veatch

             Forget the colossal dinosaur skeletons, the giants of paleontology. For me, the real, heart-stopping treasures are fossilized dinosaur eggs. They're not just relics; they're delicate, astonishingly scarce snapshots of these prehistoric reptiles. Composed of fragile crystals, an eggshell is a miracle that survived eons of geological forces. This inherent fragility makes any find a momentous occasion, especially those shells from the Jurassic Period.

My journey in search of fossils led to the Morrison Formation, which crops out over a vast area in Colorado. Though famed for its giant sauropods, it unexpectedly coughed up a critical piece of the paleontological puzzle: at least six different spots containing both Jurassic eggshells and whole eggs, a true rarity for a time period between 155 to 148 million years ago. As one of the world’s premier Late Jurassic fossil sites, the Garden Park Fossil Area yielded the first discovered remains of iconic dinosaurs like Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, and Allosaurus. It famously served as a primary battleground for the 'Bone Wars,' the legendary 19th-century rivalry between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.

The local action centered in the Garden Park Fossil area of Fremont County, Colorado. The whole thing kicked off in 1991, when Kenneth Carpenter of the Denver Museum of Natural History found a well-preserved eggshell fragment while collecting fossil snails (Hirsh 1994). That initial find paved the way for more fragments and eventually led paleontologists to the site that became the focus of scientific inquiry: Egg Gulch (Figure 1.).

Figure 1. General location of Egg Gulch in Garden Park, north and west of Cañon City, Colorado. 

At Egg Gulch, weathering and relentless erosion had stripped away layers of rock, revealing ancient eggshell fragments scattered across a rugged, 10-meter slope (Figure 2.). The presence of tiny fossilized freshwater plants called charophytes established the site's age as early Kimmeridgian (157.3 to 152.1 million years ago), making it the oldest dinosaur eggshell site in North America (Alf, 1998).

Figure 2. Under a brilliant spring sky, the crack team of volunteers from the Dinosaur Depot and the author are in the field, exploring Egg Gulch and painstakingly unearthing rare Jurassic dinosaur eggshells. This 1998 trip followed several years after the discovery of the nest. The Bureau of Land Management protects this area. You can’t dig here or take anything without a permit. We had such a permit as the collection of these fragments was for scientific purposes. Photo date 1998 by S. W. Veatch.

The initial surface collection in the early 90s produced hundreds of shell pieces. But the biggest prize was the discovery of an embryonic dinosaur bone at Egg Gulch—proof that life and death had played out right here (Alf, 1998). An entire nest of eggs was collected there (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Dinosaur egg clutch from Garden Park, Colorado. Now on exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  Photo date 1997 by S. W. Veatch.

In 1989, after the dinosaur nest with eggs was found, I was part of a field party from Cañon City’s Dinosaur Depot (Figure 2.). We wanted to see if we could find something new. It was time to get serious. I felt the true weight of that when I visited Egg Gulch.

We couldn't just aimlessly wander; we implemented a systematic approach to finding eggshells by spreading out and working our way up the slope, much like a TV search party looking for evidence at a crime scene. The fragments were larger and more concentrated closer to their source. Each shell fragment was bottled and meticulously labeled. I noticed the fragments were mostly concentrated on the flat areas and small ravines, washed out during intermittent rainstorms.

I remember finding my first piece of eggshell. I froze, the heat of the summer day instantly forgotten, my breath catching in my throat as I peered into the deep, spiky shadow cast by a cactus. My heart hammered a prehistoric rhythm against my ribs. There, nestled right against the face of a sandstone outcrop, was not just another bleached pebble, but something impossibly rare and ancient: a tiny, curved shard of a shell. Its color resembled that of a black crow’s wing mixed with desert dust, while its faintly bumpy texture hinted at something hidden beneath. With trembling fingers, I carefully plucked the Jurassic dinosaur eggshell fragment from its hiding place, feeling a silent, electric surge connecting me to a world ruled by thunderous giants, a treasure that had patiently waited, buried under the silent sun, for 150 million years.

Back in the lab, the shells underwent rigorous microscopic analysis. Radial thin sections, viewed under polarized light, showed the internal architecture, and highlighted that most fragments were heavily eroded. Lab technicians also used a technique called cathodoluminescence (CL), which causes the material to emit light when exposed to an electron beam (Alf, 1998; Boggs, & Krinsley, 2006; Götze, 2012; Götze, Plötze, & Habermann, 2001; Marshall, 1988; Pagel, Barbin, Blanc, & Ohnenstatter, 2000). This showed that the original shell material in some fragments had been replaced by silica.

Figure 4. Microscopic cross-section of a Jurassic dinosaur eggshell recovered at the Egg Gulch locality. According to Alf (1998) laboratory analysis revealed extensive recrystallization and diagenetic alteration in several shell samples. Siliceous replacement likely occurred as a result of the decomposition of the shells' organic matter. Photo courtesy of the Dinosaur Depot. 

Because it is not known which species laid the eggs, paleontologists use an artificial classification system called parataxonomy. The most common eggshell type was assigned to the family Prismatoolithidae, and named Prismatoolithus coloradensis (Hirsch,1994).  I also found a second, rarer, very thin dinosaur eggshell that was too altered to classify.

Remarkably, the Egg Gulch shell structure is similar to the Orodromeus eggshell from Cretaceous sites. Orodromeus was an ornithopod (bird-hipped) dinosaur. In the Garden Park area, the only known ornithopods are Dryosaurus and Othnelia. All the evidence points to one of these two as the likely parent of the P. coloradensis eggs.

 

Figure 5. Discovering Jurassic age dinosaur eggshell fragments right on the surface of the Morrison Formation is incredibly exciting because these delicate, ancient remnants offer a rare, tangible link to the reproductive lives of the prehistoric reptiles that once roamed this landscape. It's a thrill to realize that just by walking across these rocks, you're picking up direct evidence of where a dinosaur mother may have nested over 150 million years ago. Photo date 2023 by S. W. Veatch.

Collecting these rare Jurassic dinosaur eggshells marked a highlight of my summer’s fieldwork. The dinosaur eggshells unlocked a story of multiple nesting seasons and preservation, all providing invaluable data on a globally scarce fossil resource. The resulting story provides a tangible connection to life 150 million years ago, a whisper from the past made loud by patient, detailed science.

 

Figure 6. Nodular patterns or ornamentation, as seen in this image, is primarily hypothesized to have served in functions like shell strengthening, and may have also been related to respiratory gas exchange through specialized pore arrangements. Photo date 2023 by S. W. Veatch.

Acknowledgments:

            Some of the information presented in this report was gained from a number of field trips undertaken by the author to the Garden Park Fossil Area and from former Dinosaur Depot personnel Donna Engard, curator, and Phil Wilder, program coordinator. The author is grateful to Bob Carnein for his thoughtful suggestions and insightful review of an earlier version of this manuscript, which led to significant improvements. Special thanks are also due to Sawyer Blizard for creating the accompanying map and for sharing valuable time on-site examining and discussing Jurassic age dinosaur eggshells.

References and further reading:

Alf, K, 1998. Preliminary study of an eggshell site in the Morrison Formation of Colorado: Modern Geology, Vol. 23, Part 2., pp 241-248.

Boggs, S., Jr., & Krinsley, D. H. 2006. Application of cathodoluminescence imaging to the study of sedimentary rocks. Cambridge University Press.

Carpenter, K., pers. comm.: Department of Earth Sciences, Denver Museum of Natural History, March 17, 1999, (telephone interview).

Götze, J., Plötze, M., & Habermann, D., 2001. Origin, spectral characteristics and practical applications of the cathodoluminescence (CL) of quartz — a review. Mineralogy and Petrology, 71(3-4), 225–250.

Götze, J. 2012. Application of cathodoluminescence microscopy and spectroscopy in geosciences. Microscopy and Microanalysis, 18(6), 1270–1284. 

Hirsch, K.F., 1994. Eggshells from the Western Interior of North America.  In Carpenter, K., K.F. Hirsch, and J.R. Horner, eds, 1994, Dinosaur Eggs and Babies:  New York:  Cambridge University Press, pp. 137 – 150.

Marshall, D. J., 1988. Cathodoluminescence of geological materials. Unwin Hyman.

Pagel, M., Barbin, V., Blanc, P., & Ohnenstatter, D. (Eds.). 2000. Cathodoluminescence in geosciences. Springer-Verlag.

A Florissant Fossil for the White City

 

by

Steven Wade Veatch

 The “Big Stump” at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado is one of the larger petrified stumps exposed in the Monument: it measures 3.6 meters tall and is 3.7 meters in diameter at breast height (Meyer, 2003). This solitary petrified stump is all that remains of a tree that was more than 60 meters tall when a volcanic mudflow (lahar) buried its base during the late Eocene.

Figure 1. This postcard, ca. 1894, shows a wooden framework
built around Big Stump. From the E. Simmons collection.

Big Stump is similar to the modern Sequoia (redwood) and is the type specimen described by Andrews in 1936 for Sequoioxylon pearsallii. An often-confusing aspect of paleobotany is that different organs (e.g., wood and leaves) that belong to the same living species are sometimes preserved isolated and unattached, in the fossil record. Therefore, it can be difficult to prove that they belonged to the same living species. For that reason they are sometimes given different names as fossils. At Florissant, Sequoioxylon pearsallii is the name assigned to the fossil wood and Sequoia affinis is the name for cones and foliage. They likely belonged to the same species of tree when they were living, but this cannot be proven unless these organs can be found attached in the same fossil. Philosophies differ, however, and in 1953 MacGinitie placed Sequoioxylon pearsallii into synonymy with Sequoia affinis. (Synonymy in the fossil record refers to the situation where two or more scientific names have been applied to the same fossil taxon.)

The Big Stump has been depicted in early photographs and postcards that date back to the late 1890s. Geologist Arthur Lakes, on an early expedition to the area with paleontologist Samuel Scudder, marked the location of a "petrified forest" on his original watercolor map in 1878—the general area where Big Stump is situated.

Figure 2. A broken and rusted saw blade remains wedged
in Big Stump from an attempt to cut it into sections and ship it to
Chicago for the World’s Fair. Image date 2003 by S. Veatch.

There was once a local effort to send this incredible fossilized tree stump to the World's Columbian Exposition (The Chicago World's Fair) of 1893. A plan was made in 1890 to remove the stump, transport it to Chicago by rail, and then rebuild it at the fair. Fortunately, the attempt to remove Colorado's prized fossil was unsuccessful. As it happened, the workmen’s saw blades became permanently wedged in the fossil wood. The plans to send Florissant’s famous stump to the Columbian Exposition were then quickly abandoned.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, one of the greatest cultural events of the nineteenth century, was named in honor of Christopher Columbus and celebrated the 400th anniversary of his arrival in the New World.

Figure 3. This ticket admitted the bearer into the World’s Columbian Exposition
in Chicago, a landmark event in American history and culture.
From the Michele Veatch Collection. 

Thousands were employed in the development of 633 acres of fairgrounds and the construction of 200 buildings in Chicago’s Jackson Park. Many of the fair buildings were located along constructed waterways fed by Lake Michigan. The Court of Honor buildings (14 main buildings) were covered in white stucco. Visitors, after seeing these white buildings, began to call this the White City. After three years of planning and building, and at a cost of twenty-eight million dollars, President Cleveland opened the fair on May 1, 1893. Ticket prices were 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children.

Visitors to the Columbian Exposition enjoyed more than 65,000 exhibits and attractions. The fair contained many marvels and introduced Americans and the world to picture postcards, carbonated soda, hamburgers, and a gigantic wheel (built by George W. Ferris Jr.) that visitors could ride. The fair also introduced the nation to the Pledge of Allegiance and a new holiday—Columbus Day.

Figure 4. View of the Colorado building at the
World’s Columbian Exposition. Stacks of petrified wood
appear to be on either side of the entrance
to this building. Photo from the Michele Veatch Collection.

Most of the states and territories had exhibits at the fair, including Colorado. The Colorado building had a wide variety of displays from the Centennial State. If Big Stump had been cut and quarried into sections, the Colorado building would have been a likely destination. Colorado Day was celebrated September 12 at the fair without Big Stump—Colorado’s famous fossil remained at the Florissant Fossil Beds, intact. Although Big Stump did not make it to the Columbian Exposition, other Colorado fossils probably made it to the fair, perhaps even fossils from Florissant. (See note below.)

Figure 5. Fortunately, Big Stump did not make it to the
White City but remains for visitors to the Monument
to enjoy. Image date 2003 by S. Veatch.

By its closing date on October 30, 1893, more than 27 million people had visited the White City. If Big Stump had been removed and displayed at the fair, this oddity of nature would have been lost. This magnificent fossil is now protected by the National Park Service, and visitors to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument can view Big Stump in its geologic setting.

 Note: Some photos of the Colorado building depict stacks of petrified wood by the entrance. Because the Big Stump didn’t reach the Columbian Exhibition, I think this petrified wood is from Florissant. I contacted the Field Museum to see if they still had some of this petrified wood. The Earth science curator said they had some unidentified petrified wood in the basement. I went to the Field Museum, met the curator, and examined this petrified wood. It was not fossil wood from Florissant. The origin of this wood in the museum’s basement is unknown. The wood in old photos of the Colorado Building might have come from Florissant and is no longer at the museum. We may never really know what became of the fossil wood in the photos or where it originally came from.

Acknowledgements

            I thank Bob Carnein for improving this manuscript. I also benefited from many discussions of the Big Stump with park ranger Jeff Wolin. I dedicate this article to him.

References and further reading:

Andrews, H.N., 1936. A new Sequoioxylon from Florissant, Colorado. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 23 (3): 439-446.

MacGinitie, H.D. 1953. Fossil Plants of the Florissant Beds, Colorado. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 599:1-198.

Meyer, H.W., 2003. The Fossils of Florissant, Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C., 258 p.

 

 

Unearthing Ancient Fossils: A Reflection on the Giants in My Life

By Steven Wade Veatch

I remember a scorching summer afternoon in 1992, when, with my new wife Shelly and mother-in-law Karen, I walked on a trail that meandered down the hill known as Cope’s Nipple—named after the 19th-century paleontologist who explored this site for dinosaur bones. People refer to the area as Garden Park, and it is located a few miles north of Cañon City, Colorado. 

With my mother-in-law in tow, I took the lead and attempted to be on my best behavior. She was visiting us from Interlochen, Michigan. As we walked, her presence loomed over me, casting a shadow that seemed to stretch endlessly. The air was heavy with her silent intensity, making the surroundings feel eerily quiet. I imagined a pleasing scent in the air. It reminded me of my mother-in-law's garden in Michigan. This added a mysterious touch to the atmosphere. It felt as if every step we took was heavy, as if her presence alone had a gravitational pull. My thoughts went back and forth between making a good impression on her and conjuring in my mind—since we were walking on a dinosaur graveyard—a spike-tailed Stegosaurus defending himself from an Allosaurus.

Depiction of an Allosaurs prowling about in Garden Park
during the Jurassic Period. AI generated image.

As I walked through this area, memories flooded back from two years before when I had explored it with a friend. As we made our way up a hill on that sunny day my friend and I unexpectedly came across a hilltop ornamented with an abundance of petrified wood. The sight was mesmerizing, with the hill covered in these ancient, hardened remains of trees. The wood appeared as if frozen in time, its intricate patterns and textures on full display. The crisp sound of our footsteps echoed through the stillness of the hilltop, adding an eerie ambiance to the scene. A faint scent of earthiness lingered in the air, reminding us of the long history embedded in these petrified remains. As we gently touched the wood, a cool, smooth sensation greeted our fingertips, connecting us to the past. We were the first ones to see all of this petrified wood. If someone had been there before us, all the wood would probably have been taken.

Shelly and Karen kept up with me as we continued to descend Cope’s Nipple. The scorching sun baked everything in a relentless heat. While we were going down a gentle slope, Shelly and Karen talked about how different this landscape was than the woodlands and humid air of northern Michigan. Shelly vividly recounted to her mother the harrowing encounter she had had a year before, when a venomous rattlesnake unexpectedly lunged at her on an earlier trip here. She urged her mother to remain vigilant and attentive while going down the pathway.

It was the hottest part of the day as we continued to walk along the trail that now cut through a dark-red disintegrated siltstone, part of the world-famous Jurassic-age Morrison Formation. Insects buzzed under an intense Colorado blue sky. A scorpion scurried with a quick dart beneath a cracked slab of siltstone, its jagged edges leaning against a smooth cobble of quartz. Time seemed to slow down in the heat, and seconds lingered in the dry air. 

I had been here in the spring of 1991 with a prospector buddy. On that day, while ascending a ravine, we stumbled upon huge heaps of bentonite clay. It had rained the night before, and the clay had swollen up to five times its normal size. Nodules of a lilac-purple St. Stephen’s agate were bulging out of the swollen, wet clay. I crawled up the side of a clay mound and plucked out one of these agates. As I held it to the sunlight to see the concentric layers inside, I slipped and slid down the slick clay on my backside. Wet, cement-like clay covered my back to my head. There was no way to wash it off, and it was solidifying in the arid air. My wife had a lot to say about this when I returned home. She also wanted to see this place, Garden Park, the next time I went.

Now my adventure with my wife and mother-in-law heated up. The dirt-covered path, lined by piñon pine, was in the middle of a dinosaur graveyard and was under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management—no fossil collecting allowed. I couldn’t imagine dinosaurs once ruled this dry, semi-arid land covered with yucca and cactus. As we walked along the trail Shelly’s voice poked into my consciousness. She had just bent down to pick something up from the side of the path. She was describing it to her mother: “It’s cone-shaped with a subtle curve. It has a pointed end.” She continued, “The other part of this is not pointed. There is a serrated edge.” The word SERRATED thundered across my consciousness. I asked her if I could see it. She handed it to me. I knew at once she had stumbled upon an extraordinary find—a pristine Allosaurus tooth, a relic from a formidable dinosaur that once reigned supreme in Garden Park’s prehistoric ecosystem. The ancient fossil, with its sharp edges and intricate ridges, exuded a sense of raw power. As I held it in my hand, I could feel the weight of its history, imagining the ferocious battles it had fought. The sight of the tooth gleaming in the sunlight transported all of us back to a time when mighty dinosaurs roamed the land. The faint scent of earth and ancient fossils lingered in the air, arousing a sense of awe and excitement. 

It was now time to finish the hike. We left the hotter, drier landscape for a riparian environment. Four Mile Creek greeted us as it sliced its way through a scenic valley adorned with cascading layers of limestone, siltstone, and sandstone. The gentle sound of flowing water filled the air, harmonizing with the rustling of cottonwood leaves along the creek bank. The earthy scent of wet soil along the stream mingled with the refreshing aroma of the nearby vegetation. As we stood there, we couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe and wonder at the natural beauty surrounding us. 

The day changed, it shifted into something new. Shelly’ discovery was important. You don’t find an Allosaurus tooth every day. My mother-in-law had a breakthrough in how she thought about me. She enjoyed our day together and listening to me talking about a vanished ecosystem filled with dinosaurs.

And I discovered how fortunate I was to have these two women in my life.

A Tree through Time

 By  Steven Wade Veatch

Thirty-four million years ago on a dismal Eocene afternoon near present-day Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in central Colorado, woodland creatures fled as the ground shook from a fiery power held deep within the Earth. This dark force manifested on the surface, where toxic gases, ash, and molten rock shot through open vents —filling the air. A red glow painted the sky as cinders rained down through the smoky, sulfurous air onto the landscape. Flows of searing lava, which can reach 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, oozed from volcanic vents, burning everything in their path. 

Following this concentrated chaos, hot ash and mud raced down the slopes of several volcanoes. Swirling mudflows pulled in surface materials, knocked down and carried small trees with their root wads, and then surrounded the bases of towering redwood trees. 

After frequent periods of active eruptions, the volcanic complex ultimately quieted down to dormancy and peaceable extinction. The mud that encased the bases of the redwoods enabled the slow petrification process to begin. The wayward mudflow also dammed a prehistoric stream and quickly formed a lake. Plants, insects, and other organisms were trapped in the lake sediments. As time passed, the lake sediments turned into shale containing fossils of these organisms.

Today, enormous redwoods grow at their ecological limit in a narrow zone along the California and Oregon coasts. Redwoods still exist at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, but only as fossil leaves, cones, or petrified stumps. It would be impossible for redwoods to grow today in Florissant’s cool, temperate highland climate. Redwoods reached towering heights in Florissant’s Eocene past, when the climate was warm and temperate.

* * *

There is a remarkable site at the monument where a singular fossil redwood stump endures despite the unavoidable and inexorable power of erosion and weathering. This petrified redwood base is unique among the others: It has a ponderosa pine tree growing from its stone center. I have always been spellbound by this juxtaposed image—the prehistoric stone stump with a living ponderosa tree growing out of it. I wanted to look at it again and make a deeper connection with this geological marvel. 

A living ponderosa pine tree grows
 from an ancient redwood that has turned
to stone. Photo date 2013 by S. S. Veatch.

As I walked on a trail to its location, Pikes Peak loomed in the distance. I passed a long, low, grass-covered meadow bounded by treed hills.  A green swath of lichen-capped rocks fringed the trail. As I neared the scene I sensed a weight to the afternoon: windy weather brought a grey, clouded sky that rolled over the land. The warm, heavy smell of rain soon rose from the wet and glistening forest floor. Glittering drops of water rested on leaves. The wind began to whistle through the trees while flowers of sky-blue flax nodded. As the rain clouds broke up, an elk wandered this high stretch of land while a coyote trotted by. 

A blue flax blossom at the Florissant Fossil Beds
National Monument. Photo date 2003 by S. W. Veatch.

When I reached the fossil redwood, I sat down on a bench to soak in the experience.  As I looked at this remarkable remnant of a primeval redwood I noticed patches of soft, velvety, emerald green moss gripping sections of the petrified stump. There are small forest sounds: a bird chirps in the distance while a chickadee croons a love song from a place deeper than daydreams. A jay scolds me from the safety of a high branch overhead. There are little rustlings in a tree behind me where a black, tufted eared Abert’s squirrel worries a pinecone. These sights, sounds, and smells make me content, and mark this natural place as special. 

* * *

Fossils are the letters that form words in a geologic story.  Together, these words complete the pages of the area’s paleontological record: messages from a distant time telling a story of plants and animals that once lived here and are now gone. The pages document the broader climate and the ecosystem it supported. Most importantly, these intimate histories—written in stone— yield a narrative of how an ecosystem responds to climate change. The Eocene marks the start of a gradual global cooling.

The secrets of deep time are exposed in fossils on pine covered hills and grassy meadows of Florissant.  At the Florissant Fossil Beds lie some of the world’s richest fossil deposits, remnants of life ranging in size from a tiny grain of pollen to massive redwood trees. Time is no longer the trickster under Florissant’s vast summer sky; instead, time is captured as a memory in each fossil and is brought forward to the present, where these vital fossils reveal a primeval Eocene ecosystem. I immersed myself in its story.  

Big Stump at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.
Photo date 2020 by S. W. Veatch.

Timeless Trees at Florissant, Colorado

The huge petrified Sequoia stumps near Florissant stretch the limits of my understanding. I’m left with only wonder, like a poem I can’t explain. Under the dominion of a clear blue sky, the afternoon light ricochets off the stone, displaying the myriad beige and brown hues of the fossil stumps. Their stony surfaces contrast with tufts of grass that surround them. The nearby orange-red bark of ponderosa pine and the scent of the forest adds another layer of magic, while silent mats of pine green moss cluster in the shadows.  Pale lichens cover some of the stone tree rings.  The warm summer air buzzes with insects.

Figure 1. View of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument's 
iconic "Big Stump." Photo by S.W. Veatch.

For me, the stone trees are a portal where the past joins with the present, and time seems to have stopped.   I imagine how it all began 34 million years ago when a cluster of nearby volcanoes, once dormant, erupted.  It started with a blast of ash and fiery molten rock shooting out from awakened vents. The air became heavy and dark, as plumes of grey ash hazed eastward towards what would become Florissant. Rainfall mixed with loose sediments on volcanic slopes, forming mud—the color of morning coffee—that rushed down the slopes of the volcanoes at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. Ash rained out of the sky and mixed with the spreading mud. The mud popped and hissed, while it spilled over ledges, covered rocks, and stretched heedlessly into the Florissant valley.

A wreckage of plants and animals tumbled in the mud’s advance as it invaded the forest of tall Sequoias. It turned the area into a surreal, harsh, hellish place, wiping out local populations of oreodonts, rhino-like brontotheres, and small horses. Birds, struggling to dodge the devastation, flew skyward from the branches of trees that stood above the mud. Tendrils of steam rose out of the jumbled mess of mud that surrounded the bases of the trees. The weight of the mud pressurized and squeezed the wood.  Over time, silica in the mud penetrated the wood, leaving behind the remnants of the ancient forest we encounter today.

I first saw the petrified trees when I was in grade school. I came back often with my family to look at them again.  This relic stone forest changed me. I studied fossils and rocks because of them. And I learned from them. I now realize how mankind is a force of nature and how we can alter landscapes, just as the ancient mud and ash did so long ago at Florissant. Our addiction to fossil fuel has altered our planet’s atmosphere and contributes to changing global climate. Florissant’s Sequoias are extinct because of climate change, and these trees encourage us to contemplate our annihilation as the planet experiences rates of extinction not experienced since a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs.
         
At the stone stumps, I take a few minutes to listen, where the sounds of the chirping birds, chattering squirrels, and the soft whispers of breezes exist with the noises of development—homes being built, cars moving and dogs yapping. I can also hear the petrified forest—it speaks of an Earth that is always in a state of change, but this protected ancient forest (a national monument now) also provides a place where change slows down, at least for me. As I look at the fossilized trees, I sense a calm as they release me from my ego and create an awareness of the wonderful things I can discover outside of myself.         

Figure 2. Dynamite was used the early twentieth century to expose this stump.
The use of explosives resulted in the shattered texture of the stump and
required the use metal bands to hold it together. Photo by S.W. Veatch.