Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is a United States National Monument in Teller County, Colorado, that is noted for its fossils. It is located in a mountain valley just west of Pikes Peak and holds spectacular remnants of prehistoric life. The fossil beds take their name from the nearby town of Florissant, Colorado.
The fossils are contained in the Florissant Formation of Eocene age. Huge petrified redwoods and very detailed fossils of ancient insects and plants reveal a very different landscape in Paleogene Colorado. Almost 35 million years ago, enormous volcanic eruptions — now designated the Thirtynine Mile volcanic area — buried the then-lush valley and petrified the redwood trees that grew there. A lake formed in the valley, and the fine-grained sediments at its bottom became the final resting-place for thousands of insects and plants. These anoxic sediments compacted into layers of shale and preserved the delicate details of these organisms as fossils. Many of the Florissant Formation insect species were described by the entomologist Theodore Cockerell. The Florissant Fossil Beds were set aside as a part of the National Park System in 1969.
"When the mountains are overthrown and the seas uplifted, the universe at Florissant flings itself against a gnat and preserves it."
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- —Dr. Arthur C. Peale, Hayden Expedition geologist, 1873.
The visitor center features exhibits about the park's geology and fossils, as well as a video about the site.
Famous quotes containing the words fossil, beds, national and/or monument:
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“See where my Love sits in the beds of spices,
Beset all round with camphor, myrrh, and roses,
And interlaced with curious devices
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There doth she tune her lute for her delight,
And with sweet music makes the ground to move,
Whilst I, poor I, do sit in heavy plight,
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—Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)
“Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)