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Natural rock window opening through pale sandstone with blue sky and tan slopes visible at Tule Springs, Nevada.
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Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument Fossil Hunting Guide

Image: David Starner (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument protects roughly 22,650 acres of Las Vegas Valley desert on the north edge of metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Introduction

Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument protects roughly 22,650 acres of Las Vegas Valley desert on the north edge of metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada. The pale, banded sediment exposed across the monument is the Las Vegas Formation, a sequence of late Pleistocene spring and wetland deposits that records about 250,000 years of cycling between hyperarid desert and the lush, perennial spring systems that Ice Age megafauna depended on. Excavations beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1962 "Big Dig" recovered Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), Shasta ground sloths (Nothrotheriops shastensis), Western camels (Camelops hesternus), North American horses (Equus species), bison, dire wolves (Aenocyon dirus), and American lions (Panthera atrox), along with smaller vertebrates, freshwater mollusks, and plant material that documents the Ice Age ecosystem in detail. Congress established the monument under the National Park Service in December 2014 to protect those resources, and visitor access is currently limited to a developed trailhead and a small interpretive footprint on the south edge of the monument. Everything inside the boundary is protected. This guide covers how to reach the trailhead, what visitors can actually see, the geology of the Las Vegas Formation, and the federal rules that make this strictly a viewing-only site.

Location and Directions

The monument runs east-west across the north edge of the Las Vegas Valley, in Clark County, Nevada. The administrative headquarters of the monument is in North Las Vegas. There is no developed visitor centre on monument land at the time of writing.

The main public access point is the Ice Age Park trailhead, on the south edge of the monument off Aliante Parkway in North Las Vegas. From U.S. 95 northbound, take the Aliante Parkway exit and head north. Aliante Parkway dead-ends near the monument boundary, where parking and a short interpretive trail give the easiest current public access to the Las Vegas Formation badlands. From the Las Vegas Strip, the drive is about 20 to 25 minutes north on I-15 and U.S. 95.

Additional public access exists on the south boundary of the monument along Brent Lane and Decatur Boulevard, where dirt roads enter monument land from adjacent City of North Las Vegas streets. These are open during daylight hours and provide walk-in access to the open desert. The monument has no developed roads, no campgrounds, and limited signage. There are no entrance fees.

A combined Las Vegas-area visitor experience pairs Tule Springs with two off-monument partners: the Las Vegas Natural History Museum on Las Vegas Boulevard North, which exhibits Tule Springs fossils and Ice Age interpretation, and Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs on Tule Springs Road, the historic spring complex that gave the locality its name and now operates as a Clark County park with year-round water and trails. Floyd Lamb Park is separate from the National Monument and has its own fees.

Bring water, sun protection, and sturdy shoes. Summer afternoons in the Las Vegas Valley regularly exceed 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and the monument has no shade. Winter temperatures are mild and the cooler half of the year (October through April) is the practical visiting window.

What Fossils You'll Find

You will not collect anything at Tule Springs. The monument is federal land managed by the National Park Service, and all fossils, archaeological materials, and natural objects are protected. What visitors can see is the Las Vegas Formation exposed in low badlands and dry washes, with occasional fossil material visible on the surface and substantial fossil interpretation provided at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum.

Fossils documented from the monument:

  • Columbian mammoth, Mammuthus columbi. The headline species at Tule Springs. Tusks, molars, vertebrae, ribs, and limb bones have come from multiple localities across the monument.
  • Shasta ground sloth, Nothrotheriops shastensis. Smaller of the two ground sloths documented from the Las Vegas Valley. Bones and dung have been recovered.
  • Jefferson's ground sloth, Megalonyx jeffersonii. Larger ground sloth, less common.
  • Western camel, Camelops hesternus. Limb bones and teeth.
  • North American horses, Equus species. Several Pleistocene horse species are represented by teeth and bones.
  • Bison, Bison species. Late Pleistocene bison, including the ancestor of modern bison.
  • Dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus. Predator material, less common than the herbivores.
  • American lion, Panthera atrox. Rare; documented from regional Pleistocene records.
  • Smaller vertebrates. Rodents, lizards, frogs, freshwater fish, and many bird species recovered from spring-edge deposits.
  • Invertebrates and plant material. Freshwater snails, ostracodes, charophyte algae, and pollen that together reconstruct the Ice Age wetlands.

Fossils visible on the surface are usually small bone fragments or scattered tooth pieces in dry washes. The well-known in situ mammoth tusks recovered during the Big Dig and later excavations are now in museum collections.

Geologic History

The Las Vegas Formation is a late Pleistocene sequence of fine-grained spring, marsh, and floodplain sediments that filled the Las Vegas Valley during glacial-pluvial intervals. The unit ranges in age from roughly 573,000 years ago in its oldest exposed beds to about 8,500 years ago in its uppermost members, with the most fossil-rich intervals between about 100,000 and 13,000 years ago. The formation has been subdivided into named members that correspond to different climatic and hydrological intervals, with the recent USGS work of Eric Scott, Kathleen Springer, and colleagues providing the modern stratigraphic framework.

During wet intervals, perennial groundwater discharged from the Spring Mountains to the west fed an extensive network of springs and small wetlands across the floor of the Las Vegas Valley. The springs supported reed marshes, sedge meadows, and gallery woodlands, all of which attracted Ice Age herbivores and the carnivores that followed them. Carbonate-rich groundwater precipitated tufa and cemented fine carbonate-rich silt and clay around plant stems and animal bones, sealing them in beds that survived later erosion. During dry intervals, surface water shrank or disappeared and aeolian (wind-blown) silt accumulated across the dry valley floor.

The Las Vegas Formation overlies older Tertiary sedimentary rocks and Paleozoic basement and is itself being cut by modern arroyos and urban grading. The pale colour of the badlands comes from the carbonate cement; thin reddish-brown or black laminations are organic-rich layers from wetter intervals.

Megafauna disappeared from the Las Vegas Valley between roughly 13,000 and 11,000 years ago, in line with the broader North American late-Pleistocene extinction. Archaeological evidence of Paleoindian presence in the valley is documented from the same general interval.

How Tule Springs Became a Fossil Collecting Site

Local ranchers and travellers along the Old Spanish Trail noted bone material in the Las Vegas Valley washes through the nineteenth century. The first scientific excavations were conducted by Fenley Hunter for the American Museum of Natural History in 1933. Mark Harrington of the Southwest Museum led work at the spring complex in 1933 and 1934 and again in 1955, recovering mammoth, camel, horse, and ground sloth material and reporting evidence he interpreted as Paleoindian artefacts associated with the megafauna.

The Tule Springs Big Dig of 1962, led by Richard Shutler of the Nevada State Museum, was a multi-institutional research excavation across the spring complex that aimed to test the human-megafauna association. The work produced thousands of fossil specimens and refined the chronology of the Las Vegas Formation, but did not confirm a Paleoindian association at Tule Springs itself.

Excavation and survey continued sporadically through the late twentieth century, and the modern USGS-led research programme on the Las Vegas Formation built the stratigraphic and chronological framework still in use. In December 2014, Congress passed and the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which included Title III, Subtitle A, establishing Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument under the National Park Service and protecting the fossil-bearing badlands from further development. The monument is one of the newest NPS units and is still in early-phase development; visitor infrastructure is expected to expand over the next decade.

Collecting Rules and Regulations

Collecting is prohibited. Tule Springs Fossil Beds is a unit of the National Park System and is managed under the National Park Service Organic Act and the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009 (PRPA). Removing, damaging, or disturbing any paleontological resource, archaeological resource, plant, animal, or rock on monument land is a federal offence. Casual collection of common invertebrate fossils that is permitted on some BLM and USFS lands is not permitted in National Park Service units.

Practical rules:

  • Stay on the developed trails at the Ice Age Park trailhead and along marked boundary access points. The monument interior is mostly undeveloped open desert with no signed routes.
  • Photograph fossils in place if you find them. Do not pick up bone fragments, teeth, or shells.
  • Significant surface finds should be photographed, GPS-located, and reported to monument staff at the National Park Service Tule Springs office. Reporting helps researchers; collecting does not.
  • No vehicles off existing roads. No camping. No fires. Pets must be leashed.
  • The monument has no entrance fees, no visitor centre on site at the time of writing, and no water; bring everything you need.
  • Summer heat is extreme. Plan field visits for the cooler half of the year and carry far more water than you expect to drink.
  • Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs and the Las Vegas Natural History Museum are the recommended supplementary stops; both are off monument land and have their own rules.

Sources

Nearby sites

On this page
  1. Introduction
  2. Location and Directions
  3. What Fossils You'll Find
  4. Geologic History
  5. How Tule Springs Became a Fossil Collecting Site
  6. Collecting Rules and Regulations
  7. Sources