Florissant Lake Beds, Teller County, CO

Fossil
Oligocene

Ted Thatcher, an entomologist at Colorado State University, was kind enough to take a pimply high school student with his graduate students on trips to Florissant during the 1950s. These are the specimens I collected then and several return trips as an adult.

There are macro and micro views and most have two sides when the matrix broke across the fossil. The current thinking is that the lake beds are late Eocene to Oligocene.

Beetles (Coleoptera)


Beetle #1

Weevil #1

Weevil #2

Side 1 of Weevil #3

Side 2 of Weevil #3

Left side of Beetle l#1

Right side of Weevil #1

Right side of Weevil #2

Side 1 of Weevil #4

Side 2 of Weevil #4

Diptera

Leaf Hopper

Spider

Snail


Tsetse Fly

Leaf Hopper

Spider

Vitrea fagelis

Right side of Tsetse Fly

Right side of leaf hopper

Left side of spider

Left side of snail

Leaves


Populus sp., i.e., poplar leaf

Salix sp., i.e., a willow leaf

Alder leaf

Lomatia lineata

Fagopsis longifolia, a beech leaf

Flower with midge

Grass seed

Grass leaf


The smudge to the righr or left of the flower stem is a tiny insect (It is three millimeters long.)

Side 1 of tiny insect by the flower stem

Side 2 of tiny insect by the flower stem


Right side of grass seed

The tip of a grass leaf

Elm Seed

Fish #1

Fish #2

Cross section of Florissant strata


Cedrelospermum lineatum seed(a type of elm)

Left side of elm seed

A small fish collected in the 1950s

A large fish collected in the 2010s
In the lower half, the front fin can be seen below ribs and a cheeck bone on the far right.

This shows the layers of the Florissant Lake deposits—alternate layers of volcanic ash, diatoms, and clay.