Paleobotanist Howard Schorn stands in the newly dug fossil quarry in the Middle Eocene Ione Formation, western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Amador County, California--our backhoe operator, with great skill and expertise, entrenched the fossiliferous horizon, carefully dumping in the process enormous quantities of large blocks of leaf-bearing shales all around the perimeter of the dig. Now, all Howard and I had to do was sit around on those piles and, with happy, methodical fossil-finding attentiveness, split the shales to bring forth paleobotanically invaluable leaves some 45 million years old. Image snapped in early afternoon on July 30, 2002.

Please note: All fossil localities in the Ione Formation of Amador County, California, presently occur on private property; explicit permission from the land owners must be secured before collecting fossils there.