Enter The Fossil Lake

Slow Moving Tropical Waters

With the help of amazingly preserved fossils, you will travel back 50 million years!  Enter a prehistoric view of what is now parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Burpee’s Fossil Lake exhibit takes you to the Green River Formation through fossils of bats, turtles, fish, leaves, and so much more. The Green River Formation is best known among paleontologists for its superbly preserved fossil fish, but the slow-moving waters preserved an amazing array of other specimens! The climate during the early Eocene was warm and temperate to sub-tropical. Intermountain basin lakes in the Green River area were surrounded by forests of sycamores, while palms and cat-tails dominated the lake margins.