By Christina Wood

Baker City Herald

John Fiedor, park ranger at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Sheep Rock Unit, sounds a little like Carl Sagan of ”Cosmos” fame.

Except where Sagan spoke of ”billions and billions of years,” Fiedor talks about ”millions and millions” – both money and years.

His figures range from the $8.5 million that has been allocated for the new Thomas Condon Paleontology Center to be built across the road from the present visitor center at the Sheep Rock Unit, to the 100-million-year-old formation of nearby Goose Rock. The rocks there indicate the John Day area and probably most of Oregon was at the bottom of the sea long ago.

”Fossils are evidence of past life, preserved by geologic process,” Fiedor explained.

More than 28,000 fossil specimens have been located in the beds, far more than the present visitor center can display or even store. Over millions of years, successive flows of lava and ash have sealed fossils into 61 distinct layers, providing a glimpse into the living past of the area.

With only about 15,000 visitors a year, the beds have been under-appreciated by the public. But Fiedor believes this will change when the new center is built. Ground will be broken in July of this year with the center due to be completed in the spring of 2004.

The center will be named for Thomas Condon, an early pioneering minister with an interest in geology. Condon surveyed most of the area after the 1862 gold discovery in Canyon City. When the Civil War began, much of the millions in gold from the area was used by President Lincoln to finance the war effort.

About 1864-65, Condon gave up his ministry and did much of the earliest work mapping the area and locating fossils. He was the first state geologist and later was professor of geology at the University of Oregon. He died in 1907 at the age of 75.

Fiedor spoke to a group of about 50 visitors earlier this month during a monthly auto tour of the Sheep Rock Unit of the Fossil Beds. He led a caravan of 20 automobiles to several sites just outside the monument and within its boundaries and shared the often exciting discoveries he and his fellow geologists and paleontologists have found in the area. Fiedor has been stationed at the unit near Dayville for 10 years.

”We’re digging up new stories every year, new findings that are changing what we thought we knew every day,” Fiedor said.

Geologic forces have helped ”unlock” many of the fossil bed’s secrets. Tectonic plate pressures have pushed the Continental plate downward under the leading edge of the Pacific plate in the John Day area. This has tilted the layers at about a 30 to 40 degree angle and allowed more of them to be visible. Each layer tells the progress story of the area, from undersea bed to rainforest. From hardwood forest to savannah/grasslands through to the present High Desert climate.

Along the way the area has been home to six different types of elephants probably coming over from the area now known as Asia, including the oldest known elephant in North America, each wave dying out as its climate changed or volcanic activity killed them off. There were once rhinos, primitive ancestors of the modern coyotes, wolves and foxes, 16 different types of horses long gone from the Western Hemisphere and camels.

Fiedor plans to lead other auto tours throughout the summer and early fall. He is also planning a ranger-conducted hike into the spectacular Blue Basin fossil beds, featuring the geologic landscape and fossil history of the basin on April 27, beginning at 10 a.m. The hike will begin at the Blue Basin trailhead, located three miles north of the Sheep Rock Unit visitor center, along Highway 19.

”Participants should bring good hiking shoes, a sun hat, jacket, water bottle, and a camera,” Fiedor said.

For more information about conducted tours of the monument, call the visitor center at 541-987-2333.

The center is generally open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no entrance fee at present, but donations are accepted and used at the center to further scientific research.