| A fossil leaf from a Tertiary Period geologic rock formation one can examine in California's Gold Country, western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, along the route to the upper Miocene Disaster Peak Formation plants, High Sierra Nevada. It's a fig leaf from the lower Miocene Valley Springs Formation, from a locality near San Andreas, County Seat of Calaveras County, Gold Country, California. Called scientifically Ficus macrophyllum--the presumably extinct Miocene counterpart of the living Ficus macrophylla--the Moreton Bay fig native to eastern Australia. Preserved on a chunk of rhyolite tuff. |