Description:
The Green River Formation deposits of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah
are best known for their immaculately-preserved fish, but other
examples are known as well, as this specimen attests. This leaf
from a tree of the Willow family which shows evidence of damage
due to insect feeding. The damage here was done a long time before
the leaf was deposited in the stratum as shown by the fact that
the holes have a dark edge where the leaf had scarred as a result
of the attack. The presence of this tree is indicative of the lakeside
environment in which it lived. Some 50,000 square miles of what
is now Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado were covered by large lakes during
the Eocene.
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