SMALL FOSSILS IN WESTERN UTAH
/
25
^85" / f h ' / \ Br i # • •
Jj
^RJ^' DESCRIBED
ON
PAGES
28
AND
29
A FIELD OF SMALL FOSSILS IN W E S T E R N UTAH A Spot That "Slept" By Frank Beckwith, Sr. In the early part of the decade of the 1870's, the Wheeler Survey was conducted through the west portion of the territory of Utah; in Millard County the surveyors erected a triangulation base on the Oak City hills, another on the summit of Notch Peak, and a third upon the tip of Swazey Peak. While working around Swazey Peak the chain men and staff of surveyors were struck to find wonderfully well preserved fossil trilobites. And imagine their surprise to run onto a tiny reef, sometimes not over six feet wide and never fully twenty, and of a total length of not over a hundred and ten feet, where the fossils were lying on the ground so thickly that handfuls might be taken up. They selected the best preserved of the specimens, and continued on their labors of surveying; but submitted these finds to scientists, who in honor to members of the survey party, named the species of trilobites after the surveyors, such as Asaphiscus Wheeleri Meek, Ollenellus Thompsoni, Paradoxides Gilberti, Ptychoparia kingi Meek, and even named the great ampitheatre of Cambrian formation "The Wheeler Ampitheatre," and the thin shales in which the fossilized creatures are found, "The Wheeler Shales."
