INITIAL RESULTS OF A PALEONTOLOGICAL INVENTORY AT GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK, NEVADA

Great Basin National Park encompasses 103 square kilometers of potentially moderate to highly fossiliferous Cambrian to Devonian strata, or approximately 33% of the total park area. Yet as of 2011 park resource managers had almost no information as to the location and significance of its paleontological resources. Beginning a paleontological resource inventory with a literature search, we discovered a severe paucity of published information. As a result, we began a concentrated on-the-ground effort to address these data needs in the summer of 2012 by recruiting two field paleontologists through the GeoCorps America Geoscientists-in-the-Park program. Using a geologic map from 1969, we began focusing prospecting efforts toward stratigraphic units identified as having produced significant fossil faunas in adjacent mountain ranges in Utah and central Nevada. Documentation of the resources includes GPS positions, coarse identifications, and photographs. The summer-long inventory effort covered an area of about 1650 acres and added 37 new paleontology localities to the database, representing 467 GPS positions and approximately 1000 fossil specimens. We found three new Cambrian localities and documented 19 specimens, including agnostid trilobites and localities potentially suitable for corroborating paleontological and geochemical patterns at the Cambrian Drumian GSSP in nearby Utah. We added 28 Ordovician localities to the database, represented by 377 GPS positions and more than 900 individual fossil specimens. Some of the more significant Ordovician fossils include starfish body fossils, straight and coiled nautiloids, an extensive tabulate coral biostrome, complete sponges, receptaculitids, a number of various cystoids, and numerous biostratigraphically significant trilobites. We documented three new Silurian localities, consisting of six GPS positions of stromatolites and rugose corals. We mapped three new Devonian localities, represented by 33 GPS points of individual fossil specimens, including excellent examples of stromatolites. The inventory also recorded the first vertebrate fossils from Great Basin National Park, including dermal denticles and a fin spine tentatively identified as belonging to the early Devonian acanthodian, Nodocosta denisoni.