| An eastbound train rumbles through the fossil leaf-bearing railroad cut near Verdi, Washoe County, Nevada, in the upper Miocene Hunter Creek Sandstone, dated through sophisticated radiometric analyses (radioactive isotope measurements) at 5.8 million years old. Eastern Sierra Nevada "foothills" in the background. The 18 species of Miocene plants preserved here demonstrate that some six million years ago, this portion of the western edge of the Great Basin Desert would have resembled, floristically, the California Gold County, western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, from roughly Placerville south to Jackson. Photograph courtesy an individual who goes by the cyber-name lennycarl08. |