John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
 Paleontologists: Reconstructing the Past in Oregon
The John Day Basin was first recognized as an important paleontological site in the 1860s, thanks to the ability of a young frontier minister,
Thomas Condon, who recognized the fossil beds as a scientific treasure. At the time, paleontology, the study of ancient life, was still a new
science. However, discoveries such as Condon’s galvanized scientific interest. By the late-19th century, researchers at Yale,
Princeton, and the Smithsonian Institution had requested and received hundreds of specimens from the John Day Basin. They were then classified
and described in the scientific literature. This early work set the stage for field paleontologists such as John C. Merriam, who, in 1899, began
the task of placing the John Day fossils in their geological, chronological, and paleoecological context. His efforts were instrumental in the
preservation of this area.
Exploration and study of the Oregon John Day fossil beds continues today. In many of the beds, the fossils are widely scattered, and their
occurrence cannot be predicted. Many types of fossils deteriorate rapidly once erosion exposes them to the elements. Thus the fossil beds are
continually canvassed by paleontologists.
 Each year hundreds of specimens are added to the National Park Service collection. Many of the items are mere fragments – a few
teeth, for instance – but each specimen is accompanied by a wealth of field data: coordinates that pinpoint both its geographical location
and the stratigraphic position, descriptions of features where it was deposited, and other data about its recovery. This information, as
well as that gained as the fossils are stabilized, prepared, and studied, is entered into museum records for use by scholars now and in the
future.
Such collection efforts have provided researchers with scientifically significant samples, which open up intriguing avenues for research.
Paleontologists can now detect subtle shifts in the composition of ecosystems through time. Researchers have identified and studied some ancient
soils preserved in the John Day Basin and are able to gauge former climatic conditions such as temperature. Sedimentologists map the orientation
of bones in a Clarno Formation quarry, and thereby plot the eddies, backwaters, and gravel bars of a river that flowed years ago.
Paleontologists determine the rate at which plant communities evolved. A biostratigrapher dates the earliest known occurrence of fossil
"elephants" in the Mascall Formation. Studies such as these combine to give us richly detailed pictures of the past.
 A unique treasure is concealed in the sculpted exposures of sedimentary rock of the John Day River Valley in central Oregon. Here
are some of the richest fossil beds in the world, and they contain a record of remarkable continuity. Fossil beds are rare. Yet these
beds show an almost continuous fossil record of diverse plant and animal life that existed here. R. W. Chaney, a paleobotanist, once
wrote that "no region in the world shows more complete sequences of tertiary land populations, both plant and animal, than the John Day
Basin." It is a record of such continuity and duration that scientists can test theories against the fossil record.
Fossil beds contain vestiges of actual soils, rivers, ponds, watering holes, mudslides, ashfalls, floodplains, middens, trackways, prairies,
and forests. The rocks are rich with the evidence of ancient habitats and the dynamic processes that shaped them; they tell of sweeping changes
in the John Day fossil basin. Great changes, too, have taken place in this area’s landscape, climate, and the kinds of plants and animals that
have inhabited it. And it is all recorded in the fossil record: The park’s Fossil Research Study Collection contains more than 22,000 specimens;
more than 2,100 species have been identified.
| 