Fossil Butte National Monument

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Fossil Butte National Monument
IUCN Category III (Natural Monument)

Location	Lincoln County, Wyoming, USA
Nearest city	Kemmerer, WY
Coordinates	41°51′52″N 110°46′33″W / 41.86444, -110.77583
Area	8,198 acres (33.17 km²)
Established	October 23, 1972
Visitors	25,000 (in 2004)
Governing body	National Park Service

Fossil Butte National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service located 15 miles west of Kemmerer, Wyoming; the national monument was established on October 23, 1972. The site preserves the best paleontological record of Tertiary aquatic communities in North America and possibly the world, within the 50-million-year-old Green River lake beds. Fossils preserved, including fish, alligators, bats, turtles, dog-sized horses, insects, and many other species of plants and animals suggest that the region was a low, subtropical, freshwater basin when the sediments accumulated, over about a 2 million-year period.

Coal mining for the railroad led to the settlement of the nearby town of Fossil, Wyoming, now a ghost town^[1]. When the fossils were discovered, miners dug them up to sell to collectors. In particular, Lee Craig sold fossils from 1897 to 1937. Commercial fossil collecting is not allowed within the National Monument, but numerous quarries on private land nearby continue to produce extraordinary fossil specimens, both for museums and for private collectors.