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Lance humored me, his rock geek wife. The idea of spending the day poking around the famous fossil-bearing layers of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument certainly didn’t thrill him. But the lure of a drive through beautiful country to a sparsely settled region which we’ve never visited before, worked. Little did we know that we were in for a day filled with scandal and controversy.

I was particularly excited about this trip since I used fossil data accumulated from the John Day layers during my senior year at the University of Arizona. The project was an attempt to recreate the world’s paleoclimate zones during the early Eocene, the warmest known time in earth’s history. The Eocene, which spanned from roughly 55–33 Ma (Mega annum, million years ago), began with a rapid global warming event excitingly labeled the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Why bother reconstructing past biozones? The “big picture” goal was to create reference material for scientists and politicians dealing with the current world situation.

No matter what is (or isn’t) causing it, our planet is undergoing a warming trend. If that trend continues, and the globe reheats to the thermal maximum, what kind of changes lie ahead? Contrary to popular belief, it is not a doom and gloom story. While there was a mass extinction of deep-water life, other life forms, including mammals, experienced a boom. Adaptation and radiation of species into new environments proved to be the key to their survival, something we could learn from. The project was ambitious and proved challenging for an undergrad, but overall I cherished my involvement in so topical an effort.

The importance of the John Day fossil beds was first realized by Thomas Condon, a man with an unlikely profession for one delving into the earth’s history. Condon was an Irish Congregational minister. Born in Ireland, Condon moved to America with his parents in 1833. After graduating from seminary in 1852 he and his wife, Cornelia, sailed around Cape Horn to tend to the souls of the hardy settlers in Oregon Country.

Condon and his family moved to the Dalles, along the Columbia River in 1862; that same year, Condon was shown some odd rocks. Long a studier of nature, Condon had also recently been exposed to Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking and controversial book, On the Origin of Species. Condon recognized the rocks as the preserved remains of ancient life forms. The specimens had been picked up by members of the cavalry while scouting a route from the Columbia River to Fort Boise. Intrigued, Reverend Condon arranged a visit to the fossil-bearing land in the John Day Valley.

After several years of exploring and digging, Condon discovered a treasure trove of fossils in a small valley he named Turtle Cove. Condon hired men to help him dig and soon he had amassed a huge collection. To raise awareness about the area, Condon sent boxes of fossils to various universities and organizations back east. In 1871, Yale paleontology professor Othniel C. Marsh led an expedition to explore Condon’s fossil beds. Marsh stayed for only a week—which disappointed Condon—but Marsh’s visit had a lasting impact on both Condon and his fossil beds.

Marsh lured away Condon’s best fossil hunters by offering larger payments, and Marsh also refused to return Condon’s specimens. Marsh not only kept the fossils, but he had the gall to name and claim them. The “missing link” in the horse family, the three-toed Miohippus, was discovered by Condon and his team and he rightfully should have received the credit. Instead, Condon is merely a footnote in Oregon’s history who went on to become the Oregon state geologist and later a Professor of Geology at the University of Oregon. Marsh, however, rose to prominence and fame, not only as America’s first paleontology professor, but as a prolific publisher of articles and namer of species. Marsh identified nearly 500 species during his heyday. Though he compiled a long list of accomplishments, anyone would have a hard time calling him a scientist. It would be more accurate to call him a fossil “pot hunter” or “grave robber.”

Through his career the ambitious man relied more on luck and money than hard work. In 1866 Marsh’s uncle George Peabody endowed the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. It should come as no surprise that Marsh was appointed to head the new institution and given the Professor of Paleontology position. Rarely did Marsh dig in the dirt; instead he used his sizable inheritances (one of which was also from his uncle) to buy specimens and undermine his competition, namely Edward Drinker Cope. As Marsh had done to Condon, so he did to Cope, who had once been a friend and colleague.

The “Bone Wars” or “Fossil Feud” raged between the two men in scientific journals and newspaper articles with each accusing the other of spying, theft, bribery, and destruction of field sites. It is safe to say that both men ignored the scientific method in their race to be the first or the best. A classic example, and one that Marsh mercilessly trumpeted, was a mistake Cope made when assembling an Elasmosaurus skeleton. Cope placed the creature’s head at the wrong end of the skeleton, a fairly innocent mistake in a young science. Marsh used it to challenge Cope’s credibility. Marsh himself made numerous similar mistakes—most notably with the Brontosaurus.

As any kid these days can probably tell you the long-necked Brontosaurus that I grew up with no longer exists. It seems that in his rush to publish and name the most species, Marsh gave the same species multiple names over the years. In 1903 the mistake was discovered and the name, according to convention, reverted to the first instance: Apatosaurus. Paleontologists finally resolved the issue in the 1970s though the last embarrassment came in 1981 when the Peabody Museum had to admit that their skeleton had the wrong skull!

None of those dinosaurs were found in the John Day fossils beds since the three-mile thick layers only represent the time from 54–6 Ma. The Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 Ma as the Cretaceous period drew to a close. Instead, the animal and plant fossils at John Day have provided scientists with a fairly complete record of how the area looked during part of the Age of Mammals and Flowering Plants. The record is divided into four distinct environmental periods. The oldest is found in the Clarno Formation (54–37 Ma), these layers contain fossils of tropical and sub-tropical plants with equids, rhinoceros, tapir, and cat ancestors.

Next oldest is the John Day Formation (39–18 Ma). These fossils suggest that the environment had cooled as there are more deciduous trees and a wider variety of animal species. Multiple volcanic eruptions left behind layers that are easy to date, providing researchers with an excellent timeline. Later, huge basaltic eruptions dramatically altered vast sections of that part of the continent. So much so that there is a two million year gap in the fossil record between the John Day and the Mascall.

The environment during the Mascall was dominated by grasslands interspersed with mixed hardwood forests. Horses, camels, deer, early elephants, bear, dog, cat, and weasel fossils have all been found. The Rattlesnake Formation (8–6 Ma) was the most recent period and the shortest, lasting only two million years. This period was also cooler and dryer with far more grazers than browsers. The fossils from this period are fragmentary and few but horses, camels, peccaries, and dogs have been found. The last of the major eruptions occurred during the Rattlesnake period. The years since have been marked by periods of erosion which have served to expose the layers and their fossils.

The systematic survey and study of the lands included in the Monument, that began in earnest with John C. Merriam’s expedition in 1899, continue today. Merriam’s group from UC Berkeley was the first to decode the geology, organize a chronology, and evaluate the context that the fossils were found in. It was partly due to his work and that of Condon’s that the area was protected for its scientific value in 1975. Today, the Monument preserves 14,000 acres, only a small fraction of the estimated 20,000 square miles in the John Day research area of eastern Oregon.

By now you must be wondering how the place got its name. After all, we’ve talked about a bunch of different men and none of them were named John Day. Well, this is just one of those weird stories that defies logic. John Day never found a fossil, in fact he never even set foot in the area. John Day was a fur trapper and hunter who came to Oregon Country in 1812 as part of the Pacific Fur Company’s Overland Expedition. He and his companion, Ramsay Crooks, endured a grueling journey but they finally reached the Columbia River. At the mouth of the Mah-hah River the men made camp. There they were attacked and robbed by a group of Native Americans who took everything the men owned, including their clothes. Somehow, the men were rescued and they eventually reached Astoria.

The story was so infamous that every time anyone would pass the site they would point and say, “There’s where John Day was robbed.” Over time the Mah-hah River became known as the John Day River. Here’s what really kills me about this story: Ramsay Crooks doesn’t have anything named after him (that I know of) and the bumbling fool, John Day, can claim a river, a dam, the fossil beds and the towns of John Day and Dayville. Not that the towns are anything to get excited about; John Day is the largest town in Grant County with a mere 1,821 residents, and Dayville tops the charts with whopping 138.

Oddly enough, though we drove the loop and visited the three main units of the Monument, we didn’t drive through either of Mr. Day’s namesake towns. We did follow along his river which winds through the Monument and is the source of the Monument’s name. Our first stop was the Painted Hills unit which is aptly named. The hills look like multi-colored layer cakes with various shades of reds, purples, oranges, yellows, and occasional streaks of black. It was a really an unusual clay landscape, mostly devoid of life.

Then it was on to the Thomas Condon Paleontology and Visitor Center at the Sheep Rock unit. The VC has an extensive museum with exhibits of fossils uncovered throughout the Monument. Though paleontologists weren’t working that day, we could see fossils and various tools in their lab. After a short hike into Condon’s Turtle Cove—which actually has turtle fossils—we headed out on the final leg of our loop. Our last stop was at the Clarno unit just before dark. We probably had the most fun at this small section of the Monument since there are hundreds of plant fossils to discover. It was like a treasure hunt as we pored over every surface trying to make out leaves, stems, twigs, and logs.

And speaking of plant fossils, we encountered a living one that day. There is a small botanical area at the Painted Hills unit which contains modern relatives of plant fossils found in the John Day fossil beds. There we admired a Dawn Redwood which is member of the only surviving Metasequoia species in the world. The species was known from the fossil record but presumed extinct until a small forest of Metasequoia was discovered in China in 1948. Since then the species has become a popular landscape tree. All of its fame may be leading the Metasequoia to extinction, since all the cones are being collected and the seeds sold. Scientists warn that if none of the seeds are allowed to sprout into new trees, the forest will eventually die of old age; and then the species really will be extinct. After all these millennia, we certainly hope not!

Photos: View our photographs from John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Dates: We visited the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument on 06/07/08.