| Fossil-bearing exposures of the upper Mississippian Diamond Peak Formation along the slopes at right in Elko County, Nevada, north of White Pine County, Nevada. The Diamond Peak Formation produces one of the largest late Mississippi fossil faunas in the US West, including: foraminfera; corals; bryozoans; brachiopods; gastropods; pelecypods (AKA, the bivalves); cephalopods (numerous species of goniatites ammonoids); crinoids; ostracods; and conodonts (diminutive tooth-like denticles, unrelated to modern jaws, that served to enable food gathering in an extinct lamprey eel-like organism). Photograph courtesy an individual who goes by the cyber-name KOI. I edited and processed the image through photoshop. |