Top--A dozer operator excavates for professional invertebrate paleontology studies (by university professors) rich graptolite-bearing shales in an upper Ordovician section of the middle to upper Ordovician Vinini Formation, Eureka County, Nevada, a number of miles west of the western border of White Pine County, Nevada. Photograph courtesy S. C. Finney; I edited and processed the image through photoshop.

Bottom--Hills to right of dirt trail are underlain by the graptolite-bearing shales and siltstones of the middle to upper Ordovician Vinini Formation, Eureka County, Nevada, a number of miles west of the western border of White Pine County, Nevada. Photograph courtesy Charles E. Mitchell; I edited and processed the image through photoshop.

The Vinini Formation produces world-class suites of middle to latest Ordovician graptolites, plus numerous conodont species and even the relatively rarely encoutered (in the geologic record) Caryocaris--an extinct bivalved crustacean.