An early settler from Florissant Missouri named this area after his home town. 35 millions year ago this valley was dominated by the lake Florissant stretching 12 miles through an ancient forested valley and the average width was one miles. Lush ferns and shrubs lives within the redwood, pine, cedars and a mixed hardwood forest. There are the clear evidences that there were thousands of insects in the humid climate.

The volcanic eruption took place again and again and was one of the reasons for the creation of the lake. The ash flows into the lake and covers the debris of the dead insects and plants which has now turned into fossils.

Today Florissant fossil bed national monuments preserve this place which is an internationally renowned site. More than 60000 specimens have been collected by the paleontologists working here. As so much of lake life is preserved out here, it is really difficult to preserve the other form of life which inhabited here.

Most of the fossils discovered here are stored in some university, museums with a few displayed in Park Visitors center. The park now preserves millions of undisturbed fossils and studies a limited number that are excavated each year.

While the insects are too fragile and they are very hard to be preserved but the volcanic ash did the very good job and preserved the insects for so long. More that 1400 species of the insects have been found here. Most of them are the same as we found today. However, some of them are extinct and no more in North America. Flies like tsetse fly are no more in the world and have been completely extinct.

In the Eocene epoch the mammals emerged as the most important land animals. Some of the insects have been excavated with the leaves on which they live. Most of them are from the Eocene epoch and provide a great deal of information about that time. The study reveals that the mammals emerged as the dominating species and they even occupied the air and the water. However those mammals were not like the one which we see today. They were completely different from today and most of the in fact all of them are now extinct and no more seen on the earth.

I would definitely like to add that this place has really come out to be one of the biggest discoveries which have really rewritten the history. I could not find any discovery around the world which has revealed about the past in much better way than the Florissant fossil bed national monument. Ever since it has been included in the national park system, it has seen lots of excavations.

Tags: fossil beds, insects and plants species, interesting facts on florissant fossil