Nevada: A Gold Mine of Ichthyosaurs – The Humboldt Mountains and Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

More fossil ichthyosaur specimens have been found in the Triassic rocks of the Humboldt and Shoshone Mountains than anywhere else in Nevada. In the summer of 1905, portions of 25 specimens were recovered from South American Canyon in the Humboldts and some 37 specimens were identified in West Union Canyon of the Shoshones, where Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is located. Join David K. Smith as he explores Annie Alexander’s 1905 collecting expedition and the development of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

David spent 19 years with the Education and Outreach unit of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) as a Visual Communications Specialist, retiring in 2015. In his last few years at UCMP he was the staff archivist on a grant to catalog the Museum’s archives and became interested in its history as a result. Today he continues to volunteer at the Museum, writing online finding aids, fielding archives requests, and pursuing historical projects that strike his fancy.