Birth, Burial, And Discovery
Posted by: 
Volcanoguy
N 44° 33.171 W 119° 38.755
11T E 289844 N 4936685
One of three signs on Thomas Condon Paleontology Center deck.
Waymark Code: WM2PQV
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 12/02/2007
Views: 27
One of three signs on Thomas Condon Paleontology Center deck.
Marker Name: Birth, Burial, And Discovery
Marker Text: About 35 million years ago, ancestral Cascade volcanoes began countless eruptions that showered this region with volcanic ash. The ash hardened into tuffs or weathered to clay, and led to the colorful deposits visible in Sheep Rock.
Sheep Rock is a place of bones. Each layer was once the surface of the land, teeming with life forms. Over millions of years, successive ash and clay deposits entombed skeletal remains, preserving many of them as fossils. Nearly six million years ago regional deposition slowed.
As erosion peels and cuts away the layers, fossils are exposed to the sun after a subterranean journey of millions of years. Once surfaced they could be gone in a flash of weathering, their story lost. Today, paleontologists strive to carefully collect the fossils before they are destroyed by the elements. Their discoveries expand an already remarkable prehistoric record.
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