| At Lost Burro Gap in Death Valley National Park, California. Note the seeker of mid Paleozoic Era paleotology up on the "bench," about three quarters the way to top of the photograph. He is standing in the latest Devonian section of the Middle to Upper Devonian Lost Burro Formation, several feet below its contact with the Lower Mississippian Tin Mountain Limestone (all darker colored rocks to the skyline above the reddish-brown zone roughly three quarter the way to top of image). That upper few feet of the Lost Burro Formation here consists of a brown and pinkish-brown weathering shaly quartzitic dolomite which produces stunning specimens of a spirifer-type brachiopod identified as Eleutherokomma. Additional Late Devonian brachiopods from the uppermost Lost Burro Beds include Tylothyris cf T. raymondi Haynes, "Camarotoechia" aff. "C" doplicata (Hall), Cleiothyridina cf C. devonica Raymond, and Productella. This photograph, by the way, was originally snapped with a Nikon 35mm camera. |