From a series of fresh water lakes near Green River, Utah, this tan colored, fine grained sedimentary rock is famous for yielding all kinds of fish, turtles, birds and bats from roughly 50 million years ago, during the Eocene Epoch.
Ammonite Panel
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-03T19:05:47-06:00Named for the Greek/Egytian god Amun, who typically wore ram's horns on his head. The curling structure of the Ammonite shell resembles a ram's horn, and was described as such by the ancient Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder. In the Middle Ages, people mistook the spiral shells for petrified coiled snakes, and called them [...]
Stromatolites
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-03T19:04:49-06:00In Greek, "stroma" means "mattress" and "lithos," "stone." These fossilized microbial mattes are amongst some of the oldest living animals on the planet, dating back 3.5 billion years ago to the Archean age. The sulfur yellow stromatolites come from the Strelley Pool formation (Warrawoona Group) in Western Australia, amongst the oldest known stromatolites. There are [...]
“Igmont”
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-03T19:03:56-06:00Nicknamed by the hotel owner's children, this rubber museum cast of a Monitor Lizard was mistakenly labelled as an iguana by its previous owner. These modern day reptiles live in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. They are meat eating carnivores, and possess a primitive third eye on the top of their skulls that can [...]
Alligator Head
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-03T19:00:44-06:00This vintage taxidermied head of a North American Alligator was purchased at an antique store in Denver. Alligators and crocodiles come from an ancient family of life that evolved at the same time as the dinosaurs. There are primitive Archosaurs found as far back as the Early Triassic, roughly 250 million years ago. The animals [...]
Orthoceras Panel
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-03T18:59:44-06:00Its name means "straight horn" in Greek. This large ebony panel comes from the Cette Formation of Morocco, and dates back to the Devonian Period, 360 million years ago. Orthoceras were squid like creatures in hard, cone-shaped shells. They swam in the oceans and probably ate armored trilobites and other small creatures.
“Sophie”
Bridgett Gutierrez2015-04-06T18:59:45-06:00"Sophie" is a large, meat eating sea lizard known as a Tylosaurus. Sophie swam in the Western Interior Cretaceous Seaway that divided North America about 85 million years ago. At over 35 feet from nose to tail, Sophie swims from the ceiling of Paleo Joe's, and her head rests in the lobby. Inside her abdomen [...]