SHOSHONE MOUNTAIN RANGE

Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park encompasses 1,540 acres. The elevation ranges from 6,840 feet to a high point of 7,880 feet. The hillsides in the park are covered with big sagebrush, while pinyon pine and Utah juniper dominate the upper elevations.

Common animal inhabitants include mule deer, black-tailed jackrabbits, cottontails, western bluebirds, pinyon jays, chukar partridge, whiptail lizards, western fence lizards, gophers and snakes.

​​Nestled at 7,000 feet on the western slope of central Nevada’s Shoshone mountain range, the park provides an array of stimulating recreational opportunities. The forested slopes provide shade, and breezes help to moderate the summer temperatures which seldom exceed 90˚F. Late spring and early fall can often be the nicest times of the year. Winter visits to the park are possible, but call for weather and road conditions before visiting.

PHYLLOCERAS OF JAPAN

Phylloceras consanguineum (Gemmellaro 1876) a fast-moving carnivorous ammonite from Late Jurassic (Middle Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagasgar, off the southeast coast of Africa. (22.8° S, 44.4° E: 28.5° S, 18.2° E)

This classical Tethyan Mediterranean specimen is very well preserved, showing much of his delicate suturing in intricate detail. Phylloceras were primitive ammonites with involute, laterally flattened shells.

They were smooth, with very little ornamentation, which led researchers to think of them resembling plant leaves and gave rise to their name, which means "leaf-horn."

They can be found in three regions that I know of.  In the Jurassic of Italy near western Sicily's Rosso Ammonitico Formation, Lower Kimmeridgian fossiliferous beds of Monte Inici East and Castello Inici (38.0° N, 12.9° E: 26.7° N, 15.4° E) and in the Armine area, southeastern Toyama Prefecture, northern central Japan, roughly (36.5° N, 137.5° E: 43.6° N, 140.6° E).

OUR CARIBOO MOUNTAINS

We soak up the breathtaking views after a long morning's paddle. The east and south sides of our route are bound by the imposing white peaks of the Cariboo Mountains, the northern boundary of the Interior wet belt, rising up across the Rocky Mountain Trench, and the Isaac Formation, the oldest of seven formations that make up the Cariboo Group.

Some 270 million-plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere between Prince George and the Alberta border. The rest of the province had yet to arrive but would be made up of over twenty major terranes from around the Pacific. The rock that would eventually become the Cariboo Mountains and form the lakes and valleys of Bowron was far out in the Pacific Ocean, down near the equator.

With tectonic shifting, these rocks drifted north-eastward, riding their continental plate, until they collided with and joined the Cordillera in what is now British Columbia. Continued pressure and volcanic activity helped create the tremendous slopes of the Cariboo Range we see today with repeated bouts of glaciation during the Pleistocene carving their final shape. Warm and dry with bellies filled full of soup and crisps, we head back out to explore more of nature's bounty.

HOLCOPHYLLOCERAS OF MADAGASCAR

There is tremendously robust suturing on this lovely ammonite, Holcophylloceras mediterraneum, (Neumayr 1871) from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagasgar. Madagascar is a treasure trove of outstanding fossil species and this ammonite is no exception.

The shells had many chambers divided by walls called septa. The chambers were connected by a tube called a siphuncle which allowed for the control of buoyancy with the hollow inner chambers of the shell acting as air tanks to help them float.

We can see the edges of this specimen's shell where it would have continued out to the last chamber, the body chamber, where the ammonite lived. Picture a squid or octopus, now add a shell and a ton of water.