Fallon County - Model Geologic Time
Background Info/ Historical Story:
“An unusually well preserved fossil jaw of a large beaver size multituberculate, Taeniolabis, collected in Fallon County will help place an as yet unidentified formation in the Fort Union group. The jaw is being studied by Dr. W. A. Clemens”
“There are few geologic formations more recent than Oligocene time of 35 million years ago in southeastern Montana, and even the Oligocene exposures are very limited, as erosion has been continually reducing their extent. The major drainage systems have been cutting down through their own
flood plains and stream bed gravel deposits of the last tens of thousands of years exposing a few fossil bones, mostly nonmineralized, of animals that lived here as recently as eight to ten thousand years ago. These Pleistocene animals include two elephant forms, the mammoth and the mastodon, camel, horse
and extinct species of bison, all of which became extinct in North America by the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Bones and teeth of these animals are found today along the stream beds of the Little Missouri River, Box Elder, Beaver and O’Fallon Creeks in southeastern Montana.The erosional work of wind and running water continues to expose new surfaces of all geologic formations, each with its characteristic fossil forms; and paleontologists, both professional and amateur, collect and prepare these fossils for the stories they have to tell.”
-Shifting Scenes, Marshall E. Lambert 1976
Collections Spotlight:
- Taeniolabis cast at the Carter County Museum - Taeniolabis
Photos, Maps, etc:
Links to other helpful sources:
- Postcranial osteology and locomotor habits of the North American Paleocene multituberculate Taeniolabis (Taeniolabidoidea, Mammalia) | Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments | Springer Nature Link
- Geologic and structure contour map of the southern half of the Cedar Creek anticline, Fallon County, Montana and Bowman County, North Dakota
- geologic map of montana