Nearly all of the fossils were embedded in surface rock and easy to pick up, he said. ''That was another great piece of luck, since we couldn't have brought in excavating equipment on horseback,'' he said. ''Best of all, despite weathering, many of the smallest fossils were remarkably intact and will be relatively easy to study.'' The collection represents both sea and land animals, and through the 1,000-foot thickness of the main butte the group explored, the transition from oceanic to terrestrial environments was preserved in a smooth gradient.........
''For example,'' Dr. Novacek said, ''we found the oyster beds and sand dollars just beneath the lowest sediments containing land animals...................