Description

Early Eocene

Green River Formation

Kemmerer, WY, USA

32mm x 32mm flower on 56mm x 70mm triangular slab.

Flower, Angiosperm.

Flowers are delicate natural structures so it would seem unlikely they could have been preserved as fossils and yet they do exist.  Fossil flowers are occasionally found all the way back to the Early Cretaceous.

This specimen dates back to the warmest interval of the Cenozoic Era.  It was ten million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs but the world was still about as tropical as it had been in their time.  The Rocky Mountain region of North America was covered in tropical forest which ranged into northernmost Canada.