Near Hagerman in Idaho, this 4,351-acre monument protects one of the richest fossil deposits known from the Blancan age of North American mammals: 3.07 million to at least 4 million years old, and at least 200 species. It is best known for the largest known concentration of the Hagerman horse, Equus simplicidens, from the historic Smithsonian Horse Quarry, and it also holds an extinct camel, Camelops, the oldest New World river otter, likely ancestor of all four American river otters, a bear, Agriotherium, and one of the earliest coyote-like dogs, Canis lepophagus. The beds became a National Natural Landmark in 1975 and a National Monument in 1988. In 2014 it became a sister park of Sibiloi National Park in Kenya and raised money to send three Kenyan students to the Koobi Fora Field School, and in 2021 it began a 25-year partnership with the Idaho parks department, which runs Thousand Springs State Park.
The Hagerman horse and at least 200 other species · Pliocene, 3.07 to 4 mya
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
