Let's talk a little bit about fossils and the Klondike Mt. fossil dig site that is open to the public for fossil digging.

The Klondike Mountain Formation is an early Eocene geological formation located in the northeast central area of Washington State. It is rich with fossils from that Era (lasting from 36 to 55 million years ago).

One of the animals living at this time was Eosalmo, an ancient relative of present day salmon.

Well, back in 2002 I was visiting the area to dig some fossils and this happened.

Crazy, right?

This link takes you to the Wikipedia page that has a picture of the exact fossil I found. Below is the same picture.

The next picture is the other half of the fossil that they let me keep! From what I understand they would usually keep both halves of a big find like this but, I guess they were mesmerized by that dopey picture of me in the paper. :)

A close up of the fin.

The head on this side was just rubble, unfortunately, guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. :/

Here is a letter I received from the museum curator a few months after finding it.

There is a little video about the Stonerose Fossil Center and in it you can see the good half of the fossil in their display case. Here are some screen shots of it.

And the video.

There is also a cast of the fossil in the Burke Museum in Seattle.

Thanks for coming along with me on this trip back to Stonerose.

Have a fantastic weekend!