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| USGS Bulletin; Union Wash Field Trip | E-Mail And Links To My Pages | BLM Collecting Guidelines | On-Site Images |
| Union Wash Ammonoid Images | Public Domain Fossil Images | Paleontology Links | Inyo County Links |
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One of the great Early Triassic (roughly 240 million years old) ammonoid localities in North America can be visited at Union Wash, near Lone Pine, California, in the shadows of Mount Whitney (at 14,495 feet, the highest point in the contiguous United States). Here can be found roughly two to three dozen species of extinct Ceratitic ammonoids (forms that bear a suture pattern intermediate between simple goniatitic types and the more complex ammonitic varieties) in the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation. At this Web Site you will find many images of fossil ammonoids that occur at Union Wash, in addition to on-site scenic photographs, links to paleontological resources on the Web, and links of specific interest to Lone Pine and Inyo County, in general. Please Note: The fossil localities at Union Wash lie within the Federally designated Southern Inyo Mountains Wilderness. This means that only surface collecting is allowed by the Bureau of Land Management: one must not dig into the strata within a wilderness region--only freely eroded, loose fossil specimens may be kept. Also, please understand that the collecting status at Union Wash is subject to sudden change without notice. Always check the local Bureau of Land Management office before attempting to collect fossils at Union Wash; this is an absolute must--permits may soon be required to collect fossils at Union Wash. For a detailed description of the fossiliferous Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation at Union Wash and elsewhere in Inyo County, take a look at an online version of the Public Domain document United States Geological Survey Bulletin 1928, Stratigraphy of the Lower and Middle(?) Triassic Union Wash Formation, East-Central California by Paul Stone, Calvin H. Stevens and Michael J. Orchard, originally issued in 1991. Also, go on a virtual field trip to Union Wash at my page: A Visit To The Fossil Beds At Union Wash, Inyo County, California, complete with on-site images and links to images of the Early Triassic ammonoids. And for an abstract to another technical paper that deals with the Union Wash Formation, entitled Chemostratigraphy of the Union Wash Formation: Implications for the Early Triassic Recovery from the Permian Triassic Mass Extinction, click here. Thank you for visiting Ammonoids At Union Wash, California. Please come on back often to check out my updates. |
| A collector searches for ammonoids in the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation; snow-clad, Pleistocene glacier-gouged Sierra Nevada rises above Owens Valley to the west. |
| And be sure to check out my other Web Sites--both paleontological and musical--at My Pages. That's where all of the various web pages I have created are housed and categorized. |
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And for information pertaining to fossil localities on land administered by the United States Forest Service, check out their Paleontology Web Page. |
The Graphic Truth About Graphics| For best results viewing the graphics at this site, AOL users must disable the default Compressed Graphics mode. To do this, go to Settings at the top of the browser's screen; click Preferences, then Internet Properties WWW. Click on Web Graphics up at the top, then check the box which reads "Never Use compressed graphics." And finally, restart your computer. Images viewed through AOL's Compressed Graphics mode appear horribly degraded. |
 Looking
eastward to the Inyo Mountains and
the mouth of Union Wash.
A look near the famous Parapopanoceras
ammonoid zone
in the Union Wash Formation
A Sierra
Nevada Mountain range vista from the
boudary with the Southern Inyo Mountains Wilderness.View east
up Union Canyon Wash from the boundary with the Southern Inyo Mountains
Wilderness.A late
afternoon vista of the Sierra Nevada
from near the boundary with the Southern Inyo Mountains Wilderness.Collecting
ammonoids from the world-famous Meekoceras
beds in the Lower Triassic
Union Wash Formation.Two views from the classic Meekoceras beds in
Union Wash. |
| A Meekoceras gracilitatus (White) ammonoid from the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation, Union Wash, Inyo County, California. Specimen is 54mm in diameter. |
| Here is a series of black and white images from the classic work, Lower Triassic Ammonoids Of North America by James Perrin Smith, United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 167, originally issued in 1932. Smith figured many ammonoids from the Lower Triassic Union Wash Formation, including a number of important type specimens collected from the exposures at Union Wash. |
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| For exhaustive, comprehensive listings of Earth Science resources available on the Web, try these links--you may not need to go any farther to find what you want. |
Boggy's Geology Links Main PageJack Mount's Paleontology & Fossils Resources PaleoPages: Web Links Dedicated To Paleontology California
Geological Survey Online Virtual Field Trips Paleoportal
Fossils Resource Guide