A Florissant Fossil for the White City

by Steven Wade Veatch The “Big Stump” at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado is one of the larger petrified stumps exposed in the Monument: it measures 3.6 meters tall and is 3.7 meters in diameter at breast height (Meyer, 2003). This solitary petrified stump is all that remains of a tree that was more than 60 meters tall when a volcanic mudflow (lahar) buried its base during the late Eocene. Figure 1. This postcard, ca. 1894, shows a wooden framework built around Big Stump. From