Left to right: my late father (an Engineeering Geologist) and paleobotanists Dr. Diane Erwin and Howard Schorn. One of the major highlights of the field trip was this stop at a dramatic overview in the Ione Basin. The trio is standing atop the Lower Miocene Valley Spring Formation, which overlies in disconformable geologic fashion the plant-bearing Middle Eocene Ione Formation (such an unconformity denotes a substantial break in geologic time between deposition of the two rock units, a great period of geologic time when sediments were not being deposited). The view is roughly southwestward toward the Great Central V alley. Image snapped on October 19, 1999.

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.