John Day Fossil Beds Photo Gallery
These are pictures of two of the units of the John Day Fossil Beds. The Painted Hills is the third. The photos in both John Day Photo Galleries are in chronological order of when I drove by them.
This is the Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. This is a close up of the top of the hills. "Tropical to subtropical forests mantled the local terrain some 54 to 37 million years ago,"
(John Day Fossil Beds. 1999. National Park Service).
This is a hill to the right of the palisade above. "The cliffs of the Clarno Palisades were formed when a succession of ash-laden mudflows (lahars) inundated a forested landscape," (John Day Fossil Beds. 1999. National Park Service).
This the John Day River and a hill on the way from the Clarno Unit to the Sheep Rock Unit.
The John Day Fossil Beds are considered "some of the richest fossil beds in the world, and they contain a record of remarkable continuity. Fossil beds that span even 5 million years are rare. Yet these beds show an almost continuous 40-million-year fossil record of diverse plan and animal life that existed here 54 million to 6 million years ago," (John Day Fossil Beds. 1999. National Park Service).
This is Cathedral Rock of the Sheep Rock Unit. "This large block of the John Day Formation slid down from the high bluff to the west...the slump caused a re-routing of the John Day River, which now forms a horseshoe bend around the base of Cathedral Rock," (John Day Fossil Beds. 1999. National Park Service).
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