• Knightia eocaena mass mortality

    Fossil Butte

    National Monument Wyoming

Plants

View from Cundick Ridge

Monument landscape.

NPS photo

Five hundred and twenty different kinds of plants were documented in Fossil Butte National Monument by fall 2003.

In 1984, Dr. Robert Dorn and his coworkers mapped and categorized the monument's vegetation into fourteen types: Aquatic (rooted in water), Aspen, Barren, Alkali Sagebrush (low sage); Basin Big Sagebrush, Mountain Shrub, Saline, Wet Meadow, and Willow. Their distribution is controlled primarily by the depth, clay, and moisture content of the soil, but some types, like the Barren type, which occurs on ridgetops, are controlled by the force of the wind.

Did You Know?

Diplomystus dentatus, NPS photo of Fossil Country Museum specimen

Railroad workers played a major role in the discovery of fossils from the Green River Formation.  In the late 1860's, Union Pacific workers uncovered the first major fossil fish beds (Lake Gosiute) near the town of Green River, Wyoming.