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The forbidding Big Badlands in Western South Dakota contain the richest fossil beds in the world. Even today these rocks continue to yield new specimens brought to light by snowmelt and rain washing away soft rock deposited on a floodplain long ago. The quality and quantity of the fossils are superb: most of the species to be found there are known from hundreds of specimens. The fossils in the White River Group (and similar deposits in the American west) preserve the entire late Eocene through the middle Oligocene, roughly 35-30 million years ago and more than 30 million years after non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. The fossils provide a detailed record of a period of abrupt global cooling and what happened to creatures who lived through it. The book provides a comprehensive reference to the sediments and fossils of the Big Badlands and will complement, enhance, and in some ways replace the classic 1920 volume by Cleophas C. O'Harra. Because the book focuses on a national treasure, it touches on National Park Service management policies that help protect such significant fossils.
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The White River Badlands L I F E O F T H E PA S T James O. Farlow, editor THE WHITE RIVER BADL ANDS G E O L O G Y and PA L E O N TO L O G Y R ACHEL C. BENTON D E N N IS O. TE R RY J R . E M M E T T E VA N O F F H . G R EG O RY M c D O NALD INDIANA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA iupress.indiana.edu © 2015 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The White River Badlands : geology and paleontology / Rachel C. Benton, Badlands National Park, Dennis O. Terry Jr., Temple University, Emmett Evanoff, University of Northern Colorado, H. Gregory McDonald, Park Museum Management Program, National Park Service. pages cm. – (Life of the past) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-01606-5 (cl : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-01608-9 (eb) 1. Fossils – Collection and preservation – South Dakota – White River Region. 2. Paleontology – South Dakota – White River Region. I. Benton, Rachel. II. Terry, Dennis O., [date] III. Evanoff, Emmett. IV. McDonald, H. Gregory (Hugh Gregory), [date] QE718.W54 2015 560.9783'9 – dc23 2014044309 1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15 We wish to dedicate this book to the Jones Family of Quinn, South Dakota. For over 26 years, Kelly, Mary, and Doug provided a home away from home for the authors and many of their students. Be it providing a place to sleep while conducting fieldwork, hosting a group of researchers for a barbecue, or simply providing a welcoming respite from the heat of the day, the Jones family and the logistical support that they provided over the years helped to make this book possible. Thank you. Viewed at a distance, these lands exhibit the appearance of extensive villages and ancient castles, but under forms so extraordinary, and so capricious a style of architecture, that we might consider them as appertaining to some new world, or ages far remote