Crack open a rock in the Clarkia Lagerstätte fossil site near Clarkia, Idaho, and you’re likely to find a well-preserved leaf from the middle of the Miocene Epoch 15 to 16 million years ago, preserved so well that you may even briefly see some of the original colors before they oxidize to black.
Crack open a rock in the Clarkia Lagerstätte fossil site near Clarkia, Idaho, and you’re likely to find a well-preserved leaf from the middle of the Miocene Epoch 15 to 16 million years ago, preserved so well that you may even briefly see some of the original colors before they oxidize to black.
Crack open another rock and you could be lucky enough to find a tree squirrel fossil from that same period. That’s what happened when a group of students led by North Idaho College Professor Bill Richards, Ph.D., embarked on a research trip in search of fish fossils at the north end of the Kienbaum family racetrack in 2009.
The squirrel is the first four-legged animal scientists have uncovered in Clarkia, and it provides an important clue in the history of an area rich in leaf fossils and ancient biological molecules.
“It’s not out of the ordinary to find sites with really well-preserved leaves, but it’s almost completely unheard of to have sites that actually preserve DNA, proteins, things like that,” says paleobiologist John Orcutt, Ph.D., Gonzaga University biology lecturer.
Continue reading at Gonzaga University.
Image via Gonzaga University.
