Reddish backpack just below center of picture gives perspective to a nice outcrop of reddish-brown and grayish-white clays in the Middle Eocene Ione Formation, Ione Basin, observed in the neighborhood of The Discovery site--so-named because that's the specific locality where I first found fossil plants in the Ione Basin back on July 21, 1991. This particular outcrop is unfossiliferous, but demonstrates to great advantage the clay-rich properties of the Ione Formation. Elsewhere in the Ione Basin, several beds in the Ione Formation are mined for their commercial-grade quantities of kaolinite clay. Image taken on March 11, 2004.

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.