John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is a 14,000 acre (57 km²) park near Kimberly , Oregon. Located within the John Day River Basin, this U.S. National Monument is world-renowned for its well-preserved, remarkably complete record of fossil plants and animals, a record that spans more than 40 of the 65 million years of the Cenozoic Era (also known as the Age of Mammals and Flowering Plants). The monument is divided into three units: Painted Hills (named for the delicately colored stratifications) northwest of Mitchell, Sheep Rock which is northwest of Dayville, and Clarno which is 20 miles west of Fossil. Blue Basin is a volcanic ash bowl transformed into claystone by eons of erosion, colored pastel blue by minerals.
Visitors can follow trails into the badlands and examine fossils displayed at the visitor center while scientists continue field investigations and the painstaking analysis of the monument's vast fossil record.
The Fossil beds contain vestiges of the actual soils, rivers, ponds, watering holes, mudslides, ashfalls, floodplains, middens, trackways, prairies, and forests. The rocks are rich with the evidence of ancient habitats and the dynamic processes that shaped them; they tell of sweeping changes in the John Day Basin. Great changes, too, have taken place in this area's landscape, climate, and in the kinds of plants and animals that have inhabited it.
The John Day Basin was first recognized as an important paleontological site in the 1860's, thanks to the ability of a young frontier minister, Thomas Condon , who recognized the fossil beds as a scientific treasure. At the time, paleontology was still a new science. However, discoveries such as Condon's galvanized scientific interest. By the late 19th-century, researchers at Yale, Princeton, and the Smithsonian Institution had requested and received hundreds of specimens from the John Day Basin. They were then classified and described in the scientific literature. This early work set the stage for field paleontologists such as John C. Merriam, who in 1899 began the task of placing the John Day fossils in their geological, chronological, and paleoecological context. His efforts were instrumental in the preservation of the area.
Exploration and study of the John Day fossil beds continues today. In many of the beds, the fossils are widely scattered, and their occurrence cannot be predicted. Many types of fossils deteriorate rapidly once erosion exposes them to the elements. Thus the fossil beds are continually canvassed by paleontologists.
The area's National Monument status was authorized October 26, 1974 and established in 1975.
Literature describing the park states that 12 years ago a student visiting the park found a fossilized banana that was 4.3 million years old.
