More than a 100 groups of mammals have been found in the early Miocene (37 – 20 mya) John Day Formation that underlies the Mascall near Kimberly, north central Oregon. I'm planning a field trip this August to collect in the fossiliferous strata along the beaches and those of the John Day that have yielded beautifully preserved speciments of many of the animals we see domesticated today.

A recent find has archaeologists and pet-lovers equally excited. How much do you love your little Fido? Enough to wrap him in linen and take him with you?  I'm not thinking summer vacation here but something more along the lines of Valhalla. That is exactly what happened to an Egyptian puppy some 2,300 years ago.

Radiolarians are exquisitely beautiful amoeboid protozoa that have been living as zooplankton in the world’s oceans for about 600 million years.

These tiny, siliceous, single-celled organisms with their intricate mineral skeletons make-up the world's smallest clocks. Because they occur in continuous and well-dated sequences of rock over large portions of the ocean's bottom, these minuscule microfossils act like a yardstick, helping geologists accurately date rock from around the globe from the Cabrian onwards.