BLM Wilderness Trips Mark Fossil Day

John Kendall (left) and Kristoffer Laman take a break at a petrified log that was a stop on one of the National Fossil Day field trips into the De-Na-Zin portion of the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness south of Farmington.

Two field trips last week by the Bureau of Land Management took people to an area of the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness where most had never been before.

The field trips into the De-Na-Zin portion of the wilderness were in celebration of National Fossil Day on Oct. 12.  A BLM paleontologist guided a group into the wilderness on Oct. 12 and repeated the field trip Oct. 15. 

“I believe the field trip participants have an appreciation for the amazing fossils we have right here in our own backyard,” said BLM Farmington Field Office paleontologist and field trip guide Sherrie Landon.

The wilderness is about an hour’s drive south of Farmington.  Field trip participants signed up on a first come, first serve basis.  Each field trip was limited to 20 people.

The BLM Farmington Field Office oversees the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness.  The wilderness is famous for its abundance of fossils (including dinosaur fossils) and its unusual formations of sandstone, hardened mud and other material – carved by wind and rain to form what have come to be known as “hoodoos.”

Last year on National Fossil Day the BLM conducted two field trips into the Bisti portion of the wilderness.  The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness used to be two wilderness areas – the Bisti Wilderness and the De-Na-Zin Wilderness – until an act of Congress consolidated both areas into one wilderness.

Although the Bisti portion of the wilderness is more popular among visitors because the Bisti has more of the spectacular hoodoos, the De-Na-Zin can’t be beat when it comes to petrified wood.  Field trip participants were taken to an area where petrified logs were the size of big Ponderosa pine trees. The logs are where they were deposited by a deluge of water that swept over the area some 60 –70 million years ago.

National Fossil Day is a nationwide celebration organized to promote public awareness and stewardship of fossils, as well as to foster a greater appreciation of their scientific and educational value.