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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

Grand Junction Geological Society

Abstract


Paleontology and Geology of the Dinosaur Triangle, 1987
Pages 91-96

Fruita: A Place for Wee Fossils

George Callison

Abstract

Fossils are found in special places. One such place is near Fruita, Colorado. One hundred forty million yrs ago this place was crossed by streams meandering from highlands in western Utah. An 800-ft-thick section of riverine and lacustrine sedimentary rocks now holds the record of these streams and their related environments. Here, in crevasse-splay slurries and reworked volcanic ash accumulated in intrachannel flood basins, are fossil remains of a complex streamside community of animals and plants where windblown sands and calcareous soil horizons add evidence of drought episodes.

Large familiar dinosaurs such as diplodocid, camarasaurid, and brachiosaurid sauropods are found with stegosaurids and carnosaurs. But an unusual and rare assortment of tiny fleet-footed crocodilians, miniscule mammals, lizards, sphenodonts, occasional diminutive fabrosaurid and coelurosaurid dinosaurs, and flying pterosaurs predominate the small vertebrates. Pollen, spores, and macro-plant fossils indicate large coniferous trees and other woody vegetation. Notable by their extreme rarity are such obviously moist-environmentally adapted species of frogs and salamanders. Absence of unoxidized sediments add to the picture developing as one of drought periodically punctuated by flooding, with galleries of large trees and other woody vegetation along stream courses, but of no lushly vegetated swamps.


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