Fossils in formula for fantastic day trips

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Fossils in formula for fantastic day trips

By DON McMANMAN
Herald staff writer

South of the Tri-Cities, amid the rimrock and sagebrush of Central Oregon, you can drive 50 million years back in time.

The John Day Fossil Beds National Monument sprawls across much of northcentral Oregon. Its fossil-bearing rocks stretch from 50 million years ago to 6 million.

"It is rare, worldwide, to have such a span represented in one area," said Hank Tanski, a ranger for the park.

You won't be able to dig fossils in the park, but there's an excellent opportunity near the end of your trip. Within the park, formations are too valuable and too fragile to allow unsupervised amateur digging, Tanski said.

Animal fossils range from creatures similar to dogs and cats to the protitanops, "which we can't even relate to any animal today," Tanski said.

Most fossils were laid down in a flat boggy area, where the water oozed past tropical or subtropical plants toward the Pacific Ocean just to the west.

Palm trees and bananas can be found in the lower levels. Plants and creatures from more moderate climates can be found in higher levels, reflecting cooler, drier weather.

Sediment built upon sediment, sealing and preserving creatures that fell on the sunlight-dappled plain.

When this layer-cake record of life was about half done, the first signs of the Cascades began to rear toward the sky to the west, forever damming clouds.

Then, lava began to spurt out of cracks in the ground across the land east of the Cascades. Thick layers of basalt spread over a huge region of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, sandwiched between even more layers of sediment that collected between the outbursts of fire.

In most places - including the Tri-Cities - fossils from long ago were sealed in by basalt. But in others, a few fast-flowing streams - such as the John Day River -sliced deep into the earth to bring creatures back into the light after 50 million years.

But the action of water carved out other formations in the canyons as impressive for their delicate immensity as they are for any connection with fossilized life.

The Painted Hills is one. Cream hills mound up northwest of Mitchell, daubed with splashes of pastel green, red and orange. The colors are the remains of iron compounds rusting in the air.

You'll also see streaks of black, remnants of wildfires that swept through forests that once sank their roots into this soil.

A drive through all three units of the national monument will take longer than a day trip will allow. There are several campgrounds in the area. Call the monument's headquarters at 541-987-2333 for a list.

To get there:
Travel south from Hermiston on Highway 207. You'll pass Hardman, a community only a few souls away from becoming a ghost town.

After turning onto Highway 19, you'll find the national monument's visitor center on the left. It's an old farmhouse filled with fossils discovered in the area, including the two-foot skull of a procadurcodon, a rhinolike creature that thundered across the plain 35 million years ago.

While at the center, ask a ranger to point out a metasequoia tree.

There are maps at the center and hints about sights.

To get to the Painted Hills, travel west on Highway 26 and follow signs to your right after passing Mitchell.

Returning home to the Tri-Cities, drive north on Highways 207 and 19 to the city of Fossil. Travel through downtown to the high school. You can't miss it. Behind the high school is a hill stuffed with fossils.

You and your kids can collect anything you see. Shovels and hammers are helpful, but there's plenty of material lying around you can simply pick up.

Most of the fossils you'll see are of the cedarlike twigs of the metasequoia - the same tree you saw alive back at the monument's visitor center.

At one time, scientists thought the metasequoia disappeared from the planet - except for their legacy in stone.

But early in this century, some were found in an isolated valley in China. They were commercially propagated and now grow in the same region where they flourished 30 million years before.

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