Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park

The Ashfall Fossil Beds of Antelope County in northeastern Nebraska are rare fossil sites of the type called lagerstatten that, due to extraordinary local conditions, capture an ecological "snapshot" in time of a range of well-preserved fossilized organisms. Ash from a Yellowstone hotspot eruption 10-12 million years ago created these fossilized bone beds. The ash depth was up to 1 foot. At the Ashfall Fossil Beds site, the ash depth is instead 8 to 10 feet due to the depression of a watering hole. The site is protected as Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park, a 360-acre (150 ha) park that includes a visitor center with interpretive displays and working fossil preparation laboratory, and a protected ongoing excavation site, the Hubbard Rhino Barn, featuring fossil Teleoceras (native hippo-like ancestral rhinoceros) and ancestral horses. The Ashfall Fossil Beds are especially famous for fossils of mammals from the middle Miocene geologic epoch. The Ashfall Fossil Beds are stratigraphically part of the Serravallian-age Ogallala Group, within the Ash Hollow Formation.