One of many brilliant blue ponds in the Ione Basin, western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Amador County, California. This one lies in a brilliant white, fluviatile (river-deposited), silica-rich sandstone of the Middle Eocene Ione Formation, situated in the vicinity of Lygodium Gulch (named after the rather common to abundant remains of a fossil climbing fern, Lygodium kaulfussi, whose closest modern counterpart is the living Lygodium palmatum, now native to Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia north to New England); Lygodium Gulch is certainly one of the great fossil leaf localities in the Ione Basin. Image taken on March 8, 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.