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Animal Fossil Localities
Fossil localities exist all over the world with some yielding many fossils over a long period of time. These localities can be found in greater detail in a geological guidebook. In some localities, it is almost guaranteed that fossils will be dug up but it important to keep in mind that other people have been digging in the same locations for many years. Some of the more famous fossil localities are the Burgess Shale, Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, Calvert Cliffs Maryland, Mazon Creek and Florissant.
The Burgess Shale was named after Mount Burgess and is a black shale located in the Canadian Rockies. The first fossils found in the Burgess shale were discovered by C.D. Walcott in 1909. Most fossils found here cannot be found anywhere else although there are some trilobites from the Middle Cambrian. Animal fossils found in the Burgess shale were highly important due to the impressive preservation of soft tissues.
The La Brea Tar Pits are located in the Miracle Mile District of Los Angeles. These pits hold a large amount of petroleum underneath the Los Angeles Basin. There are many animal fossils located here including fossils of mammals from the most recent ice age. During the glacial age, insects and plants were fossilized and can be recovered from the asphalt mixture that bubbles up. The La Brea Tar pits hold the remains of many unlucky animals from the past including mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, and short-faced bears. The oldest animal fossils found in these pits are 38,000 years old. There are two other famous pits in Southern California and these are located in Carpinteria and McKittrick. Other asphalt deposits can be found in Texas, Iran, Russia, Poland, Peru and Trinidad.
Calvert Cliffs State Park is located in Calvert County, Maryland and is near the Chesapeake Bay. There are many animal fossils from the Miocene epoch located on the shoreline in this locality. Another well-known place for fossils is Mazon Creek, located near Chicago, Illinois. Fossils found here are imbedded in ironstone concretions and were fossilized about 300 million years ago. Fossils in Mazon creek are unusually well preserved. The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is located in Colorado. Fossils in Florissant were formed when a huge volcano erupted about 35 million years ago, covering all of the redwood trees and animals in a prolific valley. All sorts of insects and plants were buried here under fine-grained sediment. When the sediment became squeezed into shale, intricate features of the animals were preserved as fossils.
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