April Fieldwork - 2011 - Petrified Forest National Park Area

In April, despite the high winds, I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of days with the local landowners exploring parcels in the expansion area of Petrified Forest National Park. These sites are a continuation of the area in the park locally known as the "Devils Playground", named by paleontologist Charles L. Camp in the early 1920s.

Incredible clast supported conglomerate in the upper Brown Sandstone (Sonsela Member, Chinle Formation), a rare facies for this unit but one that clearly shows deposition in good sized channels.

Isolated mesa and one of Charles Camp's documented fossil localities. These strata represent belong to the upper part of the Sonsela Member.

In-situ phytosaur snout fragment found by one of the local landowners.

The 'persistent red silcrete' horizon and upper Sonsela strata near the Devil's Playground.

Fallen blocks of the Brown Sandstone, this accumulation is named the "Storyteller Doll" by the local landowners, after a popular puebloan indian figure.

Snow on the Painted Desert

It makes it a bit hard to prospect for fossils, but I always find the Painted Desert to be even more beautiful under a blanket of snow.  People are often generally surprised to hear that it snows in Arizona, but the entire state isn't like Phoenix.

photo courtesy of Dave Velk