JOHN DAY FOSSIL BEDS: PALEONTOLOGY, VOLCANOLOGY, AND SEDIMENTOLOGY, OH MY!

LOVELOCK, Elizabeth Clare¹, MAGUIRE, Kaitlin C.², PATRIDGE, Karyn A.³, ORDWAY, Michelle¹ and SAMUELS, Joshua X.¹, (1)National Park Service, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, 32651 Hwy 19, Kimberly, OR 97848, (2)Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, (3)Kimberly, OR 97848, liz_lovelock@nps.gov

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (JODA) is located in eastern Oregon and is comprised of the Clarno, Painted Hills, and Sheep Rock Units. The park was established in 1975 for its superb fossil resources spanning nearly 40 million years of the Cenozoic from the early Eocene to the late Miocene. Fossils preserved at JODA include a diverse array of vertebrate, invertebrate, plant, and trace fossils. The wide variety of rock types at JODA provide ample resources for research projects focusing on tuffs, lava flows, or sedimentary and volcaniclastic rocks from a range of environments. The Thomas Condon Paleontology Center at the Sheep Rock Unit is home to an active research program with museum collections and lab facilities, as well as education programs and hundreds of fossils on display for the public.

JODA recently became involved in the GeoCorps program in cooperation with the Geological Society of America and hosted two GeoCorps researchers for the summer season of 2010. Their research projects focused on the geochemistry of the tuffs in the John Day Formation and the ecological niche distribution of mammals from the Mascall fauna during the mid-Miocene climatic optimum. Projects like these are valuable contributions, adding to the understanding of the park’s resources.

The education and outreach programs at JODA provide opportunities for school classes to take field trips to the monument, classroom activities for teachers, and ranger programs for the public. Field trips give students insight into fossil discovery, as well as the lab and curation work necessary to put fossils on display at a museum. Fossil kits and other educational materials are available for loan to teachers for use in their classrooms. Ranger led activities include hikes and night sky programs.

These resources make JODA a great venue for addressing research questions relating to Cenozoic fossils, volcanism, and other geologic processes. Future projects will hopefully involve detailed geologic mapping of the Sheep Rock Unit and development of a multidisciplinary GIS database.

Session No. 185--Booth# 178

T81. Geology in the National Parks: Research, Mapping, Education, and Outreach (Posters)

Tuesday, 2 November 2010: 8:00 AM-6:00 PM

Hall D (Colorado Convention Center)

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 42, No. 5, p.456

© Copyright 2010 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.

Back to: T81. Geology in the National Parks: Research, Mapping, Education, and Outreach (Posters)

<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>